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How Did Dorothea Dix Impact Society

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Dorothea Dix impacted many countries including the United States and Canada as well as thousands upon thousands of people. She focused the main portion of her life helping the mentally ill. She was also a teacher, author, superintendent of nurses, lobbyist and most importantly, a caregiver. My purpose is to share on how big of an impact and caring soul Dorothea Dix was. Dix was born in Hampden, Maine in 1802 to two neglectful parents, one of which was an abusive alcoholic. Her childhood was not like many children; it was a dark, scary and unhappy time in her life that left scars on her mental and physical health. So, that is why at the age of 12 she ran away from her home to live with her strict grandmother who agreed to train and educate …show more content…

At this retreat she witnessed the mentally ill being cared with dignity and respect. When she returned back to Boston in 1837, after her grandmother passed, she found out that her grandmother left her an inheritance that supported Dix for the rest of her life and helped her with her sympathetic work. So, in 1841 she volunteered to teach Sunday school classes to female convicts at East Cambridge Jail, where she saw people with mental illness who had been treated like animals. They had no heat because the guard said they couldn’t feel extreme temperatures, no clothing, no bathrooms, and females were mixed with males. This is where Dix’s journey began. She investigated every mentally ill facility in Massachusetts and documented the conditions and treatments. This document was submitted to the state legislature in 1843 and passed quickly to get better conditions and a larger asylum for the mentally ill. The next two years Dix traveled to New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, and Maryland and did the same exact thing she did in Massachusetts to improve the …show more content…

While this was happening, Dix took some time off and traveled the world to help other countries like in America. In 1861, she volunteered as a nurse in the Civil war and was named “Superintendent of Army Nurses” until 1866. Then she went on to help families find missing men who served in the war. She was a caregiver to them because she took care of the wounded and comforted

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