PETERSBURG, Va. (AP) — When the American Psychiatric Association celebrated its 175th anniversary three years ago in San Francisco, it featured photographs of two Virginia mental institutions that contributed to its birth — what are now Eastern State and Western State hospitals.
The exhibition also featured two Virginia psychiatrists who led what were then called lunatic asylums — Dr. John Galt at Eastern in Williamsburg and Dr. Francis Stribling at Western in Staunton — and co-founded the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, the forerunner of the national association.
Former Virginia Mental Health Commissioner King Davis, a featured speaker, was struck by the absence of another state mental institution, now known as Central State Hospital near Petersburg.
The hospital was founded in Richmond in 1870 as the world’s first mental institution for Black people in a state that had also established the first state mental hospital in the nation at Eastern in 1773.
“They had no idea,” said Davis, even though the association awarded him its coveted Benjamin Rush Award for his work to preserve and digitize more than 800,000 records and 36,000 photographs documenting a century of the hospital’s past.