The dark history of mental health treatment lingers in untouched buildings and chilling stories. Little was known about the intricacies of the mind until very recently, and it took hundreds of years for less barbaric and more progressive therapies to emerge.

Virginia, like many other states, is littered with asylums that are now abandoned. Although these are popular visitation spots for urbex explorers, believers of the paranormal, and adrenaline junkies alike, most of these places are now private property and are (legally) inaccessible.

The nation’s first hospital dedicated to treating the mentally ill was constructed in Virginia, officially known as the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds (later Eastern Lunatic Asylum then Eastern State Hospital). Its creation was more than likely brought about from the interest and influence of by Virginia’s governor, Francis Fauquier.

The aim of this hospital seems as though it was not to aid those suffering from the effects of mental illness – but rather to remove them from “civilized” society. Fauquier stated his recommendation in a 1766 address that “a poor unhappy set of People who are deprived of their Senses and wander about the Country, terrifying the Rest of their Fellow Creatures. A legal confinement, and proper Provision, ought to be appointed for these miserable Objects, who cannot help themselves.” He plainly viewed those whose minds worked differently as less than human, and unfortunately many others of his time shared in his belief.

Fauquier died in 1768, but with succeeding governor Norborne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt sharing his interest in its construction, the hospital was completed in 1773 and admitted its first patient in October that year.

The treatments administered were standard at the time but were unsuccessful at best and dangerous at worst, ranging from castor oil to straightjackets. Vague records for patient outcomes exist and show that more than a quarter of people in the care of the institute died, but the causes are obscure.

There are many contemporary accounts archived with the Digital Library of Colonial Williamsburg describing the condition of the hospital. A note was written in July of 1781 by citizens of Williamsburg to Governor Nelson, including “The unhappy objects which are now here have been without cloathes for some time past – they are now also without Provisions…” Not even basic human necessities were being met for these patients.

Isaac Weld, who wrote the travel narrative Travels through the States of North America and published the volume in 1807, commented that the asylum did “not appear to be well regulated.” After surviving both the American Revolution and Civil War, a string of fires in the 19th century, not the maltreatment of patients, brought an end to the historic asylum. None of the original structure is still standing.

The Western State Lunatic Asylum in Stauton, Virginia became the second mental health facility in Virginia at its founding in 1828. Though its origin came over 50 years after The Public Hospital, its practices based on archaic medical knowledge about mental health meant that treatment was likewise primitive by modern standards. A clear example of this is the first female patient admitted – with a diagnosis of “religious excitement.”

The first director of the Western State Lunatic Asylum was Dr. Francis T. Stribling. Considering the time, Stribling appeared to do his best by patients using “medical and moral therapy,” including providing nutritious food, exercise opportunities, and caretakes who were instructed to increase patient’s self-esteem. His main goal was to understand the mental health of his patients and maintain a humane facility. However, after Dr. Joseph DeJarnette’s appointment as director in 1905, the hospital (now called Western State Hospital) found itself in a steep decline in the quality of patient treatment.

Eugenics, the study of how to arrange reproduction in a population to increase desirable characteristics, was a movement largely associated with Hitler and The Holocaust during World War II. DeJarnette was a public advocate for eugenics as early as 1908, when he recommended the prohibition of marriages for certain groups and the sterilization of mentally disabled people. Thanks in part to his lobbying, the Virginia General Assembly authorized eugenic sterilization in 1924.

In DeJarnette’s time at Western State Hospital, over 1,200 unconsenting sterilizations were performed, many by DeJarnette himself by methods including tubal ligation, vasectomy, and x-ray exposure. He publicly supported Nazi Germany’s ambitious sterilization program beginning in 1933. His extreme views unfortunately reached wider than the Western State Hospital.

Despite having opinions which now would largely be considered unfathomable, in his time DeJarnette was highly regarded in the medical community, with the opening of DeJarnette Sanitarium in 1932 a reflection of his public admiration.

DeJarnette died in 1957, but eugenic sterilization continued in Virginia until 1979. Western State Hospital vacated the property in the 1970s, and the DeJarnette Sanitarium came under control of the state in 1975 and was relocated to a new facility in 1996. The Peery Building of the original Sanitarium still stands eerily empty after multiple failed plans to demolish it.

Institutions for the mentally ill were not exempt from the rampant racism throughout the United States. Prior to desegregation, the Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane (later Central State Hospital) was organized in 1870 exclusively for the black population until 1970. Like at other contemporary Virginia hospitals, forced sterilization was a common practice up until the 1979. Other primitive practices of these institutions include lobotomies, forced restraint, and electric shock therapy.

The Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, built in 1887, was created for white, mentally ill citizens in Southwest Virginia as the hospitals faced overcrowding. Like the other asylums, lobotomies became a practice, albeit short-lived, in the 1950s. After several name changes and a complete demolition of the original structure, this hospital remains in operation as the Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute.

These are just a few of the many mental health institutions with haunting backgrounds in Virginia, with dozens more on the rest of the East Coast. The history of mental health in the United States is steeped in immorality, and while the buildings that house the atrocities continue to spark interest for present day explorers, we must never forget the tragic injustices that occurred on these solemn grounds.