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Question: I am researching about the treatment of mentally ill in the 1800s, and how Dorothea Dix helped with the treatment of the mentally ill. It would be great if I could get some help. After hours of researching, there weren't a lot of good sites i could find. Here are some good questions that would help if they were answered.
1) What were the changes of treatment with the mentally ill, before and after.
2) How were the mentally ill treated before and after Dorothea Dix got involved.
Please, with the answer leave a link of where you found it, it will be greatly appreciated. Best answers/links will be voted best answer. Thanks.
Sincerely, Sara
Answers: I am researching about the treatment of mentally ill in the 1800s, and how Dorothea Dix helped with the treatment of the mentally ill. It would be great if I could get some help. After hours of researching, there weren't a lot of good sites i could find. Here are some good questions that would help if they were answered.
1) What were the changes of treatment with the mentally ill, before and after.
2) How were the mentally ill treated before and after Dorothea Dix got involved.
Please, with the answer leave a link of where you found it, it will be greatly appreciated. Best answers/links will be voted best answer. Thanks.
Sincerely, Sara
"If I am cold, they are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned."~Dorothea Dix
She was an mental health activist, she felt passionately about getting the mentally ill better treatment. There are many great books on her.
1)"In all she played a major role 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 was also instrumental in establishing libraries in prisons, mental hospitals and other institutions.
In 1848 she decided to go after her dream. She sent a document to the United States Congress asking that five million acres be set aside to be used for the care of the mentally ill. With this request she was far ahead of her time by advocating a role for the national government in the care of the disadvantaged mentally ill. In 1854 the bill passed and was approved by both houses but was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce. After her struggle, Dorothea was exhausted. She decided to travel to Europe to rest from her thirteen years of work for the mentally ill."~~
~~See 2nd link
"She was absolutely seminal in promoting the humane treatment of the mentally ill," said Carol Carothers, director of the Maine chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Carothers said Dix's humanitarian influence still can be felt in the public debate over providing appropriate care to people with mental illness, both in residential facilities and in the communities where they live.
Dorothea Dix was born on April 4, 1802. Her father was an itinerant preacher and the family was poor. When she was 10 years old, she moved with her family to Worcester, Mass., to be near her paternal grandfather, a wealthy Boston physician named Elijah Dix. The elder Dix owned large tracts of Maine timberland, and in time the towns of Dixmont and Dixfield were established and still bear the family name.
Young Dolly, as she was called, eventually went to live with her grandparents in Boston and at the age of 14 opened her own school for girls. When her grandparents died, she inherited the family home and continued to work as an educator.
Her own formal education was not extensive, but Dix read widely, attended public lectures and performances, and developed close relationships with many knowledgeable and influential people of her time.
Although her religious training was grounded in the Methodist and Congregational churches, she was drawn to the Transcendentalist thinkers and eventually became a close friend of the renowned Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing and his family.
In 1836, Dix suffered a severe illness related to a chronic respiratory weakness and was unable to work for several years. She traveled to England and stayed in Liverpool with the family of William Rathbone, a Quaker philanthropist and a friend of Channing's. While she was there, Dix was asked to teach a Sunday school class for women incarcerated at the East Cambridge Jail. The experience changed her life.
The jail was filthy and unheated, she wrote later. Men, women and children were locked up together. Most shocking, though, was the presence of mentally ill and mentally retarded people enduring the same deplorable conditions as hardened criminals.
Dix immediately petitioned local officials and succeeded in improving conditions somewhat at the jail, and she resolved to investigate the treatment of people with mental illness in her own country.
Upon her return to Massachusetts in 1842, Dix undertook the inspection of jails and poorhouses throughout the state. She took careful notes on each facility and the conditions of the inmates. She found people with mental illness kept in chains, unclean, poorly fed and exposed to the cold. Armed with a report of her findings, she persuaded the Massachusetts Legislature to fund a major expansion and improvements at the state mental hospital in Worcester.
Hundreds of people with mental illness were transferred from the cruel environment of the prisons to the more humane and therapeutic hospital setting. Dix advocated for secure surroundings and medical treatment, as well as access to books, music, recreation and meaningful work.
Dix expanded her efforts to a nationwide crusade. In state after state, she exposed the inhumane treatment of the mentally ill and inspired the establishment of more than 30 hospitals dedicated to their care.
During the Civil War, Dix was appointed the superintendent of Union Army nurses. Though her headstrong, outspoken character did not endear her to the nurses or doctors with whom she worked, she established a reputation for tending to wounded soldiers from both sides. After the war, she helped trace missing soldiers and assisted families in reuniting with their loved ones. "~~
~~3rdlink
2)"Since Dorothea Dix was alive during the 1800