Dorothea Dix was a teacher, humanitarian, and social reformer for the mentally ill. She traveled to jails across the United States and observed the living conditions of those with mental illness and the treatment they faced along with the injustices placed upon them. Through her explorations of these jails, she encountered the horrible living conditions that those with mental illness faced. Based on her observations, she went to the legislators in each state and exchanged her recommendations with them in hopes that reforms could be made for the mentally ill. These recommendations led to better living conditions, better care, and the building of state hospitals for the mentally ill. Through her exploration of the jails, her encounters …show more content…
She moved to England and had encounters with several social reformers including, Dr. Samuel Tuke, who was son of the founder of a progressive institution for the mentally ill. While in England, she was given a book of the writings of Dr. Philippe Pinel of Paris, who was the first doctor to free the insane from their chains. This sparked her curiosity and she began her studies into the treatment of the mentally ill along with the concept of “moral treatment”, which means to treat with encouragement and kindness rather than brutality. Proper moral treatment called for individual attention and thus required a setting that encouraged familiarity. It was not just her compassion over their sufferings but the question, “What class of positive forces, philanthropic, medical, legislative, judiciary, can be summoned into the field to cope with this awful problem?” In 1841, Dorothea Dix was teaching Sunday school classes to female convicts in East Cambridge Jail. During her encounters at the jail, she saw the mentally ill being treated inhumanely and neglectfully, and she became determined to improve conditions. This led her to traveling more than 10,000 miles to explore and investigate the living conditions of the mentally ill as well as the injustices they faced in jails across the United States. She wanted to take a personal survey of every encounter she had …show more content…
The report ended with an appeal for immediate action by the legislature, after pointing out that the entire provision of care for the insane in the state was directed at wealthy patients in the state hospital at Worcester and the McLean Asylum, when there were at least 958 poor, insane, and “idiotic” persons receiving no care. She wrote in this Memorial, “I tell what I have seen--painful and as shocking as the details often are--that form them you may feel more deeply the imperative obligation which lies upon you to prevent the possibility of a repetition or continuance of such outrages upon humanity.” This led to a bill being passed for immediate relief to provide state accommodations at the Worcester state hospital for 200 additional insane persons. This memorial written by Dix was the first exchange with a state legislature and was her first legislative victory in the reform for the mentally ill, the start of many more to follow throughout the country and eventually in other countries. Over the next 40 years, Dix continued her explorations to Rhode Island, New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina, and throughout the United States and Canada encountering
During the 1700’s the jails were not only used to confine criminals, but they confined people with mental illness as well. People with mental illness were subjected to inhumane treatment, even when the individual was admitted
In the 1840s, Dorothea Dix introduced the concept of humane treatment for individuals with mental illness. She advocated for better treatment and
"There are few cases in history where a social movement of such proportions can be attributed to the work of a single individual" (Kovach) At the age of thirty-nine, a woman by the name of Dorothea Dix devoted the rest of her life as an advocate to the humane attitude toward the mentally ill. She traveled the world from state to state visiting each and every prison, almhouse, asylum, orphanage, and hidden hovel documenting everything and anything she saw. After her intricate study of what she had been a witness of she wrote a letter or "memorial" and presented it to a legislator she knew who would present it to each legislature in each state she had studied. Dorothea Dix was the pioneering force in the movement to reform the
Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine (1). She grew up in a religious home with her two siblings and her mother, Mary Bigelow Dix and her father, Joseph Dix. With her father being a distributor of religious tracts, Dix had to help stich and paste them together. She did not enjoy this chore. At the age of 12, Dix left her home and moved in with her aunt. She left to escape from an emotionally absent mother and an abusive father (2). Dorothea Dix had a hard childhood and became sensitive to others hardships due to the abuse of her father. After leaving, “She began teaching school at age 14. In 1819, she returned to Boston and founded the Dix Mansion, a school for girls, along with a charity school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her most famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824 (1).” She enjoyed teaching and was accustomed to it due to having to watch her siblings during her parents “episodes”. Dorothea Dix suffered
To begin with by examining Diox firmness, mentality , and heroic personality it was clear that Dorothea Dix was able to stop injustice going on in the East Cambridge prison. It all began that same year Diox and some friends travel to england, returning home different not the same girl she was when she left home. She had different interests, new approaches to the treatment of insane. Diox took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where the conditions were so abysmal and the treatment for prisoners so inhumane, that she began agitating at once their improvement. Prisoners at that time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with mental illness. Diox later on she began to visit every public and
Many years ago, mental illness was viewed as a demonic possession or a religious punishment. In the 18th century, the attitudes towards mental illness were negative and persistent. This negativity leads to the stigmatization and confinement of those who were mentally ill. The mentally ill were sent to mental hospitals that were unhealthy and dangerous. A push in the mid 1950s for deinstitutionalization began because of activists lobbying for change. Dorothea Dix was one of these activists that helped push for change. The change called for more community oriented care rather than asylum based care. The Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 closed state psychiatric hospitals throughout the United States. "Only individuals who posed an imminent danger to themselves or someone else could be committed to state psychiatric hospitals" (A Brief History of Mental Illness and the U.S. Mental Health Care System). Deinstitutionalization meant to improve quality of life and treatment for those who are mentally ill. This would hopefully result in the mentally ill receiving treatment so they could live more independently. The hope was that community mental health programs would provide this treatment but sadly there was not sufficient or ongoing funding to meet the growing demand for these programs. Budgets for mental hospitals were reduced but there was no increase for the community based programs. Many mentally ill individuals have been moved to nursing homes or other residential
The first colonists blamed mental illness on witchcraft and demonic possession. The mentally ill were often imprisoned or sent to poorhouses. If they didn’t go to one of those they were left untreated at their home. Conditions in the prisons were awful. In 1841, a lady named Dorothea Dix volunteered to teach a Sunday-school class for the female inmates. She was outraged with the conditions of the prisons that she witnessed. Dix then went on to be a renowned advocate for the mentally ill. She urged more humane treatment-based care than what was given to the mentally ill in the prisons. In 1847, she urged that the Illinois legislature to provide an appropriate
During the 1800s, treating individuals with psychological issues was a problematic and disturbing issue. Society didn’t understand mental illness very well, so the mentally ill individuals were sent to asylums primarily to get them off the streets. Patients in asylums were usually subjected to conditions that today we would consider horrific and inhumane due to the lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.
The temperance movement expanded democratic ideals because it kept the common man in line. Drinking caused deadly accidents in the workplace, and lower productivity in general. In the cartoon depicted in Document E shows how alcohol alone can hurt the common man. Another important reformation was the treatment of prisoners and the mentally insane. In document B, the people of America voice their opinion on how young people were being put into regular prisons as punishment for crimes. The already troubled children should not be exposed to the horrors of a regular prison and real prisoners, so a separate institution was created. Dorothea Dix was an important part of this decision. Dix wrote extensive journals about the treatment of prisoners and the mentally insane, and she was actually the first to use the term mentally-ill, as most people thought that these people were simply choosing to be
Dorothea Lynde Dix was salient to the development of both the Reform and Civil War Eras that she lived during, and to the overall United States. Moreover, Dorothea Dix had minor, but crucial, contributions to the education of children during her early years, which would help her effort in creating different perspective and establishing institutions for the mentally ill. Her onerous efforts even required her to plead to the State Legislative body, which was essential in achieving her goals for the mentally ill. In addition, Dix contributed to the Civil War when she was appointed superintendent of nurses for the Union army. Dix’s action would leave a permanent mark to the character of the United States when she helped form institutions for the mentally ill and wrote the “Bill of the Benefit of the Indigent Insane.”
Wright, D. (1997). Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century. Social History of Medicine, 10, 13
The mentally ill were cared for at home by their families until the state recognized that it was a problem that was not going to go away. In response, the state built asylums. These asylums were horrendous; people were chained in basements and treated with cruelty. Though it was the asylums that were to blame for the inhumane treatment of the patients, it was perceived that the mentally ill were untamed crazy beasts that needed to be isolated and dealt with accordingly. In the opinion of the average citizen, the mentally ill only had themselves to blame (Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, 1999). Unfortunately, that view has haunted society and left a lasting impression on the minds of Americans. In the era of "moral treatment", that view was repetitively attempted to be altered. Asylums became "mental hospitals" in hope of driving away the stigma yet nothing really changed. They still were built for the untreatable chronic patients and due to the extensive stay and seemingly failed treatments of many of the patients, the rest of the society believed that once you went away, you were gone for good. Then the era of "mental hygiene" began late in the nineteenth century. This combined new concepts of public health, scientific medicine, and social awareness. Yet despite these advancements, another change had to be made. The era was called "community mental health" and
What comes to mind when you hear the words “insane asylum”? Do such terms as lunatic, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? More than likely these are the terminology that most of us would use to describe our perception of insane asylums. However, those in history that had a heart’s desire to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different viewpoint. Insane asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate purpose in the reformation of insane asylums in the nineteenth century was to improve the treatment for the mentally ill by providing a humane and caring environment for them to reside.
Unfortunately, asylum founders could only guess at the causes of insanity. Patient after patient was admitted into the state hospitals, but the cause of their disturbance was often a mystery. Many were inflicted with various organic diseases, like dementia, Huntington’s disease, brain tumors, and many were in the third stage of syphilis. With no treatments available, providing humane care was all that could be done. In the years following the civil war American cities boomed and the asylum began struggling to keep up. Soldiers, freed slaves, and immigrants were stranded in a strange land. The asylum became organized more like a factory or small town. There were upper and lower classman, bosses and workers, patients with nothing, and patients with privileges. Sarah Burrows, a schizophrenic and daughter of a wealthy doctor had a ten bedroom house that was built for her on the hospital grounds. Burrows home was just a stone’s throw away from the hospital’s west wing, where over sixty black women slept side by side. (Asylum: A History of the Mental Institution in America). The hospital began to rely on the free labor the patients provided. However, isolating the hospital from the community meant there was no way of knowing what was happening inside the asylum. The asylum became a world apart. In the 1870’s, Elizabeth Packard, a former patient of St. Elizabeth’s, wrote about her mistreatment and abuse
Born in 1802, Dorothea Dix played an important role in changing the ways people thought about patients who were mentally-ill and handicapped. These patients had always been cast-off as “being punished by God”. She believed that that people of such standing would do better by being treated with love and caring rather than being put aside. As a social reformer, philanthropist, teacher, writer, writer, nurse, and humanitarian, Dorothea Dix devoted devoted her life to the welfare of the mentally-ill and handicapped. She accomplished many milestones throughout her life and forever changed the way patients are cared for. She was a pioneer in her time, taking on challenges that no other women would dare dream of tackling.