How Did Dorothea Dix Contribute To Health

Dorothea Dix Dorothea Dix was born an raised in Hampden, Maine in 1802. She gave America a new insight on how the mentally ill should be treated and demonstrated the appropriate way to care for others by her call for a reform. Dix was very courageous, she took risks despite the consequences. She was described by most people as the greatest humanitarian, and the most useful and distinguished person in America. This woman changed history by turning America’s views of the mentally ill from cruel and not appearing to have a proper place in the world, into something completely different. Furthermore this led her to develop a practice and asylums that gave the mentally ill another chance at life. In addition as one of the many outstanding leaders

Dorothea lived with both her father and mother, Joseph and Mary Dix in the wilderness of northern Massachusetts. She also had two younger brothers Joseph, who was named after her father and Charles Wesley. Dix did not believe living with her parents was a good life, she worked all the time to help her father take care of the household because her mother was too ill and despondent. Dix was responsible for daily cooking, cleaning, caring for her siblings, and sewing for her father’s work. She felt that her parents never loved her and the only people who did was her grandfather, Aunt Sarah and her cousin Edward Bangs. She left her parents household to live with her grandmother Madam Dix years after her grandfather passed. Madam Dix sent her to a private school where she was successful but her grandmother was not impressed; she grew tired of Dorothea disappointing her and sent her to Worchester to live with her Aunt Sarah where she also met her cousin Edward. There in Worchester Dix felt happy and loved, she enjoyed being there and later opened up her own school where she taught children essential reading, writing, social skills and traditions. Her school was successful and expanded when she started it in her grandmothers mansion after she grew sick, and at the time Dix grew fond of Unitarianism and began to display it in her

In Greenbank she was exposed to York Retreat which was an asylum for mentally ill people; there the ill were put on diets, worked out, worked in useful ways, and were treated kindly and received appropriate care. Dix was fascinated and inspired by what she seen, leading her to push for justice and change at Cambridge jail, on her visit to educate the women on religion, after seeing firsthand the abuse and horrific treatment of the mentally ill chained and whipped because they were not like everyone else in society. So she set out to inspect the conditions in every asylum and jail where ill people were kept, to make sure they were cared for properly, and if they were not she would make a case so that someone