CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Mildred Mitchell-Bateman, a mental health pioneer and the first black woman named to a high-ranking office in West Virginia, has died, according to media reports. She was 89.

One of two state-run mental hospitals, in Huntington, bears her name.

Mitchell-Bateman, a native of Brunswick, Ga., received an M.D. from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1946, according to the West Virginia Archives & History website.

In 1962, Gov. Wallace "Wally" Barron named her director of the state Department of Mental Health, the first African-American woman to lead a West Virginia state agency.

Mitchell-Bateman advocated placing mentally ill patients at facilities nearest their homes and developing community mental health centers, according to the Archives & History website.

As Mitchell-Bateman learned more about the mentally ill, she began "to realize their illnesses are as genuinely painful as physical illnesses. They need to be treated with dignity," she said in a 1998 Gazette interview.

"When you treat the pain and relieve the pain, you can feel the same satisfaction a surgeon might be able to experience when he removes a sick organ."