Acting director-general of health Bryant Stokes has told a parliamentary committee Graylands psychiatric hospital should be "blown up". Professor Stokes said the state’s largest mental health institution should be bulldozed and patients and services moved to a more appropriate location.

Professor Stokes said the state’s largest mental health institution should be bulldozed and patients and services moved to a more appropriate location.

He said the hospital belonged in "another century", criticising the way it treated patients.

"It goes back to the old mental asylum type situation," he said outside the hearing.

WAAMH president and Greens MLC Alison Xamon told 6PR Radio Graylands needed to be shut down.

"What we know is the facility is the turn of the century, and we are not talking about the last century but the century before," she said.

"It’s not somewhere you would want to send a loved one."

But Ms Xamon did not agree with demolishing the institution.  

"I’m not sure blowing up Graylands is the way," she said. 

If the Barnett government did flog off Graylands it was essential the money went back into mental health, she said.

"One of the big concerns with the selling off of Graylands is the money could go back into general revenue, which would be completely unacceptable," she said.

"This is not something that has come out of thin air, people have been talking about it for a long time, so any money that is made out of it selling it, has to go back into mental health."