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New psychiatry chief slams squalid conditions of mental health hospitals

Human rights and race equality groups have applauded the public condemnation of the squalid conditions of acute mental health wards by The Royal College of Psychiatry's new president.
In the week when professor Dinesh Bhugra takes the helm as  the first ethnic minority president of one of the oldest and most powerful institutions within the mental health sector, his comment made in  Sunday's Observer newspaper bear out what many black patients and their families have been forced to suffer in silence for decades.
Bhugra has gone on record as saying he would never use or allow any member of his family to use acute inpatient wards because they are so bad.
Findings from the latest census on inpatient care has revealed detention rates of black people has increased over the last 12 months, even though they have dropped for the rest of the population.  African Caribbean's make up 40% of patients detained in medium secure psyciatric settings and 30% of those detained in high secure forensic units, despite making up less than 3% of the national population.
'You don't go to hospital to get hurt, but that's what's happening in our acute psychiatric wards,' Bhugra told the Observer. 'Some are uninhabitable. It's completely and absolutely unacceptable. 'Wards are not safe. And I predict things will continue to get worse.'
The College's president, who will officially take up his new role from Wednesday, has brought to light what has effectively been ignored despite the David Bennett Inquiry Report and the shameful findings in the Healthcare Commission's latest report which show that mental health hospitals are dirty, squalid, dangerous places with often more patients than beds. The Risks Rights and Recovery report published earlier this year showed that over a third of hospital wards had more hospitals than beds.

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