Dorothea Dix: The Mental Illness Reform Movement

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Recommended: Mental illnesses then and now

Dorothea Dix was an activist who, in the nineteenth century, worked to help start mental asylums in America. Before she started her work, people who were mentally ill were either put in prison or almshouses (almshouses were what we would call homeless shelters now). If the family of the person who is mentally ill had enough money, they would care for the person in their home. They would hide the person and make them live only inside so no one would see them. In the prisons and almshouses, they were commonly kept chained to walls or floors or in cells smaller than horse stalls. Often, they were not properly clothed. Heating, in any form, usually was not provided for them either. In her speech to the Massachusetts legislature, she states that, “I would speak as kindly as possible of all wardens, keepers, and other responsible officers, believing that most of these have erred not through hardness of heart and wilful cruelty so much as want of skill and knowledge, and want of consideration”(Dix 1). She is saying that she does not believe that the wardens or other ‘caregivers’ are trying to be cruel; they are just doing what they have been taught to do. They did not know any better. She did not want to say anything bad about any of them specifically because of that. She believed it was more of a general problem than a problem primarily caused by the prison wardens.
Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine on April 4, 1802. Maine at the time was part of Massachusetts. Hampden was a very small town of only about 150 people. Most of those residents were very poor, including Dix’s family. Her father was Joseph Dix, a traveling Methodist minister. She very much felt the effects of her father’s strict religion. Her father had her sit for hou...

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... founding or expansion of more than 30 hospitals for the mentally ill.

Works Cited

Herstek, Amy . Dorothea Dix: Crusader for the Mentally Ill. Enslow, 2001. Print.
Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. Stranger and Traveler: The Story of Dorothea Dix, American Reformer. Boston: Little, Brown and Company , Print.
"Dorothea Lynde Dix." 2014. The Biography Channel website. Mar 13 2014, http://www.biography.com/people/dorothea-dix-9275710>.
Parry, Manon S. "Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2006. Web. 16 Mar. 2014. .
Warder, Dr. Graham. "Miss Dorothea Dix." Disability History Museum. Web. 18 Mar 2014. .
Dix, Dorothea. "Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts." Massachusetts, 1843. Speech.

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