Dorothea Dix Education

Wright, D. (1997). Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century. Social History of Medicine, 10, 13

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

Dorothea Dix founded numerous hospitals and treatment centers for the mentally ill. In my research I found on an online resource that, “In all she played a major role in the founding of 32 mental hospitals, 15 schools for the feeble minded, a school for the blind, and numerous nurse training facilities.” This quote shows her effort to make the lives of the mentally ill better by giving them a safe place to live. This, however, is not all she did for the mentally ill.

Imagine, if you can, being mentally ill in the 1840’s. You have been caged without any heat or locked up without clothing. Most of the time would have had painful physical restraints. All because of an illness you could not control. It wasn’t until a woman named Dorothea Dix was so appalled by these conditions that things started to change for those who were mentally ill. She spent over forty years of her life campaigning to get better care and living conditions for the insane and homeless.

Dorothea Dix was a remarkable figure during the 19th century because she dedicated her life to advocating for mental health reform due to the poor treatment of patients in institutions. Prison Reform, Accomplishments & Facts Her never-ending commitment and tireless efforts, including tours of mental health institutions in the United States and Europe, and advocating for those in them, brought significant improvements in the treatment of individuals with mental illnesses. (Prison Reform, Accomplishments & Facts) Through her hard work, she raised awareness about the terrible conditions in asylums across the United States and Europe. Prison Reform, Accomplishments & Facts Dix’s impact on society was big, as she helped to change the way society viewed and treated those suffering from mental illness.

She supported children being separated from adults in correctional institutes. Dix also improved the treatment of the mentally ill. Her work vastly improved conditions in hospitals, prisons, and asylums of the

In this article, the incarceration of the mentally ill is encouraged because it is safer than keeping them in mental institutions. It claims that mental institutions are extremely dangerous by their very nature and the nurses there are trained to treat the mentally ill, not to keep them from hurting themselves or other people. In prisons however, the

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.”

This was another change, not at all like ladies' suffrage and denial, which both had roots that were as critical as those of the country's, and was brilliant as a result of the shockingly undemocratic reactions that society and its family responded with. Dorothea Dix was an unmistakable figure in the refuge and correctional facility headway. She kept up for state-upheld identity and assisted with the foundation of five recovering workplaces in America. In 1841, Dr. John Galt changed into the director of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Williamsburg, Virginia. As executive of the first straightforwardly bolstered refuge in America, he understood element considerations, including talk treatment, which all rotated around review over those with enthusiastic issue as opposed to warehousing them. He trusted in out placing the patients instead of having them live in the safe houses and accepted that those with maladjustments still had

Four years later, in 1837, Dix agreed to instruct the women at the local jail on religion. When she arrives at the jail, she finds some of the women, who seem to be mentally impaired, foul and freezing, so she asks that their quarters be heated, however, the man responds that the “lunatics” do not feel the cold and therefore they do not need to waste resources keeping them warm. Incensed, Dix recruits two respected gentlemen, Samuel Gridley Howe and Charles Sumner, who confirm, and support her requests that conditions at the jail be bettered; in light of their support, the jail agrees to improve their conditions. This experience motivated Dix to study the mentally ill, in an effort to understand the cause and the best way to treat it (Morin).

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.

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

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.

In the 1840s, Dorothea Dix introduced the concept of humane treatment for individuals with mental illness. She advocated for better treatment and

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