By the 1970s three groups of psychiatric patients were receiving a particularly poor deal from the National Health Service: (a) The psychopathic patients who had never received the special facilities recommended by the DHSS; (b) A new group of patients, i.e. the difficult or dangerous psychotic patients who are now being refused admission to local hospitals, but whose behaviour is not such as to require the care of a Special Hospital; (c) The difficult or dangerous subnormal patients who could not be managed in new style or overcrowded, understaffed subnormality hospitals.