Some history:
This is the first institution in the COUNTRY for "colored persons of unsound mind".
The Confederacy established a hospital for wounded soldiers in 1862. It was reassigned in 1870 to the treatment of "colored persons of unsound mind" and was the first to offer treatment exclusively to the black population of Virginia. there were "123 insane persons and 100 paupers, not insane" housed at the asylum.
On March 22, 1885, a total of 373 patients were transferred to a newly built red-brick hospital trimmed with gray granite. It had a central four-story administration building flanked on either side by a three-story wing containing six wards. This arrangement, which is known as the Kirkbride Plan, was a symbol of moral treatment. The East and West Buildings were built on either side of the main building in 1890 and 1892 to treat more severe cases.
Patients were classified and assigned to wards for the recent and acute, chronic, demented, sick, tubercular, epileptic, criminal and suicidal. The wards for the suicidal were the least furnished. Within a few years, the average inpatient population had reached 4,800.
In 1925, hydrotherapy tubs were installed on the first floor to provide a new form of treatment.
From the opening of the hospital until 1915, the supposed causes of psychosis in those admitted included abortion, desertion, emancipation, marriage, masturbation, and typhoid fever.
The building for delinquent and feeble-minded girls was built in 1929 with a 100-foot barred arcade leading to the central building. In 1930, the new medical building was built for 100 beds. More wings were added to it later. The first floor was used for surgery, examinations, dentistry, lectures, x-rays, laboratories, treatment, and drug therapy. The second and third floors were for bedridden patients, so that they were undisturbed by out-patient and ambulatory services downstairs.
The hospital served only African Americans until the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. From 1967 it accepted all races and nationalities.
In 1980, around 1700 patients were sterilized without their consent. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, four of the 7205 people sterilized in the state of Virginia filed a class-action lawsuit requiring the state of Virginia to notify every patient sterilized between 1924 and 1973 and to pay for operations to reverse the procedure.
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I appreciated your history too! 
