Dorothea's Consideration Of The Insane

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

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

Throughout the 1800s mistreatment among mentally ill patients and prisoners was common. Patients were subjected to being starved to death, locked in cages and even beaten to death. Prisoners were subjected to similar treatment, significantly being starved and beaten to death. Dorothea Dix was an author and reformer during the late 1800s. Dix portrayed an important role of hospitals, reforming mental hospitals and insane asylums, and reform prisons.

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

Today, it seems almost incomprehensible that so many people with serious mental illnesses reside in prisons instead of receiving treatment. Over a century and a half ago, reform advocates like Dorothea Dix campaigned for prison reform, urging lawmakers to house the mentally ill in hospitals rather than in prisons. The efforts undertaken by Dix and other like-minded reformers were successful: from around 1870 to 1970, most of the United States’ mentally ill population was housed in hospitals rather than in prisons. Considering reformers made great strides in improving this situation over a century and a half ago. Granted, mental hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th century were often badly run and critically flawed, but rather than pushing for reform of these hospitals, many politicians lobbied for them to close their doors, switching instead to a community-based system for treating the mentally ill. Although deinstitutionalization was originally understood as a humane way to offer more suitable services to the mentally ill in community-based settings, some politicians seized upon it as a way to save money by shutting down institutions without providing any meaningful treatment alternatives. This callousness has created a one-way road to prison for massive numbers of impaired individuals and the inhumane warehousing of thousands of mentally ill people. Nevertheless, there are things that can be done to lower the rate mentally ill persons are being incarcerated. Such

What this list suggests, is that gender did have an influence on who was committed to insane asylums. Take the label of hysteria for example:

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 Dix was a woman who was born in Maine in April of 1802. Many people were inspired to make society a better place with the reform movement of the 1800s, so was Dix. Dix traveled to Massachusetts and Europe to observe the jails and asylums there. The living areas were most likey filthy and crowded; and often the patients were tied to beds or chairs with chains. Other times, they were left alone for hours on end with little to no care. She wanted to fix how insane people were being treated, and the only way to do that was to spread the news to more people. As the years went by, Dix founded thirty-two mental hospitals for the insane. Furthurmore, she even gave all of them a library for the patients to read books. Dix knew that with greater care and patience; the mentally ill could one day recover- not completely- but definetely be better.

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

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.