Dorothea Dix: Social Reform

363 Words2 Pages
Gavi Kamen
November 23, 2015
Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine in 1802 and became a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare of the mentally ill led to universal reforms. Her father Joseph was a Methodist preacher who was prone to depression and alcoholism and her mother suffered from crippling periods of depression. After teaching for many years, Dorthea took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where she was inspired by the dreadful conditions and the inhumane treatment of prisoners to spend the next 40 years lobbying U.S. and Canadian legislators to establish state hospitals for the mentally ill. Her efforts directly affected the building of 32 institutions in the United States. Dorothea began teaching