Dr. Mildred Mitchell-Bateman
( 1922 - 2012 )

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Dr. Mildred Mitchell-Bateman (1922-2012) made history in 1962 when she was named director of the West Virginia Department of Mental Health,  making her the first African American woman to lead a West Virginia state agency. Born in Georgia, she came to West Virgibia to work as a phychiary at Lakin State Hospital. After attending the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas, she returned to Lakin as the hospital's clinical director in 1955 and instituted a number of reforms in patient care. After she left her state post, she chaired the Department of Psychiatry at the Marshall University School of Medicine. From 1996 to 2000, she was clinical director at the Huntington State Hospital, which in 1999 was renamed Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital in her honor.

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