Hite is the supervisor of the maximum-security forensic unit at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia's expansive mental facility. Parts of the huge campus look like a ghost town with its menagerie of looming, abandoned buildings, chain-link fences, and maze of roads, but inside some of the still-used buildings live many of the Commonwealth's neediest patients.

The Forensic Unit, where Hite works, receives all of Virginia's mental health patients associated with a crime: accused criminals deemed not competent for trial, inmates who have become suicidal, inmates who have completed their sentence but are not ready to return to the community, and accused criminals who have pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Hite's unit is the Commonwealth's only forensic unit, so patients from Virginia Beach to Bristol are sent there for evaluation.

"It's kind of like an investigation," says Hite about being a forensic psychologist. "You look into the crimes a little bit to help you with your report. You know the people and their history through conversations with police officers and lawyers. The biggest part of psychology here is doing risk assessment, trying to predict and inhibit any aggression in the future."

Since Hite's patients are at Central State because they have been involved in a crime, he says the facility is part hospital and part prison. "On the one hand the patients attend therapy sessions and receive treatment; on the other hand there is a high level of security, like metal detectors, friskings, and windows with glass that's a few inches thick," he says.

As a psychologist, though, it's the patients' treatments on which Hite focuses his time. "I spend most of the day out on the ward. Every morning I meet with the treatment team for about two hours and we have appointments with different patients. We'll go in and meet with the patients, go over their treatment plans, see if they are meeting their goals, and see if they're taking their meds."

The ward, where Hite does most of his work, is a unique place. He talks about the large common rooms patrolled by a network of cameras and men wearing pads and helmets. It's a place you would not want to visit, Hite insists, even if you could.

In this unsavory place, however, Hite finds moments of hope. One of his patients has been there for more than two years, but has made significant progress. Hite says, "He's not doing half the stuff that he used to. He used to be self-mutilating, very aggressive-things like that. He's had some significant issues in his life, but he's doing much better now."

Helping depressed and suicidal patients is another facet of his job-one of which Hite is rather proud. He enjoys getting these patients to reconnect with feelings within themselves and "getting them to the point where they can see some kind of light at the end of the tunnel."

Creighton Hite '93 at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, where he treats mentally ill criminals.

Hite decided early in life that he wanted to help people through psychology. "Believe it or not, since I was ten years old I've wanted to be a psychologist," he claims. "My parents were splitting up and we went to family therapy. Ever since then that's the path I've been on. I went to Hampden-Sydney and went straight into the Psych major. The psychologist we saw back then made a huge impact on me; I've never forgotten her."

When he got to Hampden-Sydney, Hite discovered a new mentor, Dr. Donald Ortner. "He helped me all the way through from day one to graduation," recalls Hite fondly. "He was always the guy I could go to for help or with questions. I got along with all of my professors, but he was the one who really struck a cord. He was a real fun guy to be around."

After graduating from Hampden-Sydney, Hite started working with children at the Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents in New Kent, then as a special education teacher in Richmond after completing his Master's of education from Virginia Commonwealth University.

He first worked in Central State's forensic unit in the late 1990s, as a practicum student, while pursuing his PsyD in clinical psychology at Argosy University. All of this time Hite continued working with children until 2002, when he landed full-time at Central State as a treatment-team psychologist in the forensic unit. Earlier this year, he assumed the duties of maximum-security unit supervisor, while also developing a private practice.

"Having two kids, I guess I started to miss working with children," says Hite about Commonwealth Assessment and Counseling, "so the best way to get back into that without leaving [Central State Hospital] was to start my private practice."

He sees clients, mostly children and families, during the evenings and on weekends; the work ranges from assessing the parents of children who have been put into foster care to conducting therapy and psychological-educational testing with children.

The clients Hite sees at Central State and the ones in his private practice are very different, but it is a difference he appreciates. The private practice allows him to work with people he enjoys, children and families, while his forensic career lets him work with many chronically ill patients who are coping with the added difficulty of being accused of a crime. He adds with a smile that his forensic work is also a great ice breaker: "A lot of patients in my private practice see that I do forensic work and they want to know more about that. We all have our ideas about what that means. Some of them think I work in a morgue doing post-mortem investigations, like on CSI."

While he helps his patients examine the deepest recesses of their minds and gets to know them-maybe better than they know themselves-he looks forward to the day when they walk out the door and reenter the community.

"I get a lot of satisfaction out of working with chronically mentally ill patients who have been in and out of hospitals. I guess you are always kind of hoping that when they leave here it will be the last revolving door they hit. Unfortunatelysome of them you see back pretty soon but some of them I haven't seen again in the four years I've been here, so you're just kind of hoping."