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Dorothea Dix Accomplishments

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Dorothea Dix played a huge role in acquiring equal rights for the mentally ill in the 1800s. In this time, the mentally ill had little to no rights. There wasn’t care and support available to them, and instead they were thrown in prisons. Dorothea Dix was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine. She was the oldest of three children, and raised her younger siblings. Her father was a religious fanatic and an abusive alcoholic, and her mother struggled with depression and other mental illness and was not able to care for her children. At the age of 12, Dorothea went to live with her grandmother in Boston. Her grandmother was very wealthy and proper, and expected Dorothea to act the same way. A dance instructor and seamstress were both …show more content…

Horrified by the results of her research, she took this to court and secured an order that said they need to have heat, and other basic living requirements. She started traveling to find out what conditions were like in other prisons, and in poorhouses. Dorothea crafted a document that was presented to the Massachusetts Legislature that increased the budget to expand the state mental hospital at Worcester. She still wanted to do more, so she toured the country and documented the conditions and treatments of patients in mental hospitals. She founded or added to asylums in: Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and North …show more content…

At this time, nursing was seen as a job only men could do. Women were seen as weak, and people assumed they would pass out at the sight of blood, or cry when they saw people in pain. Dorothea knew that there would be a great need for nurses and planned to start a female Army Nursing Corps. These women would all be volunteers. However, when she presented this to the Surgeon General, she was refused, partly because she was a woman and wanted a female staff, and partly because everyone thought the war would last three months or less, and the General didn’t believe they would need that many

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Institutionalization in the 1800’s was Dorothea Dix was a mover and shaker, who together with a few others in her era was responsible for alleviating the plight of the mentally ill. In the 1800's she found them in jails, almshouses and underneath bridges. She then began her major lobby with legislators and authority figures across the land, to get hospitals built in what was then known as the "Moral Treatment Era. " Things did get better, with ups and downs, of course. She visited widely, in the Midwest state hospitals in Independence and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and Winnebago in Wisconsin ca.

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Dorothea Dix Dorothea Dix was a girl who grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts to Joseph and Mary Dix. Dorothea Dix was most famous for her reforms in the prison system and upgrades in mental health facilities. These improvements altered women's rights and U.S. jurisdiction forever. Dorothea Dix also developed medical needs for patients throughout the U.S. This boosted health in asylums and prisons.

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Dorothea Dix's Address To The Massachusetts Prison Reform

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By the time she died, Dorothea Dix reformed about 20 different states that had new mental institutions and better living conditions for prisoners. Many of these states, such as New Jersey, previously did not have any sort of healthcare for the mentally disabled in any capacity, causing much surprise when the legislature voted for a state hospital devoted to the care of the mentally ill. Some states, like Massachusetts, had very little to do with the mentally disabled excepting the few hospitals that had run-down wards and the almshouses that would accept the mentally challenged, the poor, and the orphans. Because of Dix, many states were now more willing to care for the mentally ill and were making prisons and jails more suitable for living.

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Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine. She was a pioneer in the treatment of the mentally ill. “She was instrumental in founding 32 mental hospitals, 15 schools for the feeble minded, a school for the blind, and numerous training facilities for nurses. Her efforts were an indirect inspiration for the building of many additional institutions for the mentally ill. She also helped establish libraries in prisons, mental hospitals and other institutions.”

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292 Words | 2 Pages

She asked her students about the harsh conditions they lived under; their answer is what led to her desire to reform mental institutions. Dorothea Dix traveled over 60,000 miles in 8 years gathering information for her reports. These reports brought about changes in treatment. They also revealed that insanity was a disease, not a choice. With her detailed observations, she approached dozens of state legislatures such as: New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland,

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