More extreme methods of treatment were taking place at WSH and other hospitals, which involved restraint, seclusion, and eventually prefrontal lobotomies, seizure induction, and sterilization. Western State and most other asylums in America were becoming warehouses for the outcasts of society, and the architecture of the buildings (while beautiful), proved to be unsafe and more of a hindrance. After the Civil War, the moral therapy approach and the asylum model of care was proving to be a failure.
In 1894 the General Assembly passed legislation which changed the name to Western State Hospital. The facility went through a brief name change in 1861, when it was called the Central Lunatic Asylum, however the founding of a hospital for African Americans in Petersburg VA would take on this name, and the name was changed back to the original title in 1870. Stribling would be the resident physician and superintendent of the hospital until his death in 1874. Patient rooms had a high level of finish work, improved ventilation, and large common rooms and corridors to promote social interaction. This collaboration resulted in terraced gardens, intricate architectural details, and most notably, spiral staircases which provided access to domed cupolas and roof walks where the majestic mountain views could be appreciated. Stribling was a major proponent of the moral therapy approach, that the cure to insanity requires an environment where patients lived comfortably and exercised outdoors. Francis Stribling to create this tranquil environment. The architect of the original buildings was Thomas Blackburn (a protégé of Thomas Jefferson), who worked closely with the hospital's director Dr. The Western Lunatic Asylum opened in 1828, designed to soothe patients and to provide an aesthetically pleasing place of recovery. By 1825 a need for a second asylum was realized, and the Virginia General Assembly approved the construction of one to serve the western portion of the state. In 1770, the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds was established in Willamsburg Virginia, and was the first public institution devoted to treating the mentally ill in the U.S.
Western State Hospital (Virginia) History
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