Dorothea Dix
American social reformer who campaigned for hospital care for mentally ill people
American reformer who documented the conditions of mentally ill people held in jails and almshouses and lobbied state legislatures for public hospitals. She was a campaigner, not a psychologist or clinician.
Why this person matters
Dix is taught as a key figure in the move from confinement toward hospital care for mental illness in the United States. State legislators, physicians and other reformers carried the changes through, and her own views and the systems that resulted had limits of race and religion.
Main contributions
Investigating and reporting conditions
In January 1843 she sent a memorial to the Massachusetts legislature describing mentally ill people kept in cages, chains and stalls. She asked the state either to restore the Worcester asylum to its intended purpose or to fund proper provision.
Lobbying for state hospitals
Her reports and lobbying are credited with legislation for a New Jersey state hospital (bill passed 25 March 1845) and the first state mental hospital in Illinois, after a report to its 1847 session. Dix Hill Asylum in North Carolina opened in 1856.
Union Army nursing
In the Civil War she was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union Army, on 16 June 1861 according to one source. She set standards for recruiting, training and assigning female nurses, and about 3,000 women signed up.
Context and limits
Dix was a campaigner, not a clinician. President Pierce vetoed her 1854 land bill for the mentally ill, arguing that social welfare was a matter for the states. She held a biased view that mental illness was linked to the conditions of educated whites rather than minorities, and her anti-Catholicism hampered work with Catholic nurses. She resigned in August 1865 and judged her war work a failure.
In your introductory course
Treatment and therapy.Appears in chapters on disorders and treatment as the main reformer in the history of asylum care. Students see that public hospital systems arose from advocacy, not from psychology.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 16.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1843
She presented her memorial to the Massachusetts legislature.
- 1845
New Jersey passed a bill to create a state mental hospital.
- 1861
She became Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union Army.
- 1881
She moved into the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton, where she died in 1887.
Sources
- National Park Service, Dorothea DixArchive or museum. Institutional biography inspected.
- The American Yawp Reader, Dorothea Dix defends the mentally ill, 1843Original work. Text passages inspected.
- Wikipedia, Dorothea DixReference work. Reference article inspected.