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Knowing Dorothea Dix – An inspiring life

The mentally ill people of today have their own rights and liberties. You cannot execute an individual for any crime, if the individual is proved to be mentally ill. They have their asylums, caretakers and therapists to ensure their well being. The sane men are keen to do much for the insane among them. However there was a time in history when people believed that the insane didn’t feel pain and discomfort.

The condition of the insane was pathetic all over the world. For instance during the 18th century, the mentally ill were considered dangerous and a menace to the society and were kept at the outskirts of Williamsburg. Williamsburg was the British capital and the biggest colony in North America from 1699 to 1780.  It was common to house the insane with criminals in public jails. People in those days believed that insanity resulted, because the individuals wanted to be that way. They believed that by torturing an insane person, the insane could get rational.

That was the state of the mentally ill at one point of our society. That was something the society considered as normal. That was something very obvious. The condition of the insane was considered irreversible. The mentally ill from well-to-do families were better cared, but the others with no means suffered. It was sad that the insane couldn’t voice their stand; alas that was why they were termed insane. That was the way the insane lived world over, until a woman ‘Dorothea Lynde Dix’ determined to change it.

It all began in the March of 1841, when Dix was 39; she volunteered to teach a Sunday school class for the East Cambridge jail in Massachusetts; which ultimately laid the foundations for major reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill. She noticed that the criminals including prostitute, drunkards and the mentally ill were all housed together in pathetic conditions. She raised her objections to this and was only told that the insane do not feel heat and cold. What then started was a lifelong crusade for the insane. She took the East Cambridge jail to court and saw her first victory. The conditions at the jail improved and heating was provided too. This victory was only the first in a series to follow.

Confronting the existing system, she observed the inmates in jails, hospitals and other care centers. In 1843 Dix forwarded a reform proposal to the Massachusetts legislature which approved her efforts for the upliftment of the hospitals. Gradually Dix was also helping in designing the facilities and for raising funds wherever required. She wrote about prison reforms in her book ‘Remarks on Prison and Prison Discipline’ published in 1845.

Massachusetts was soon followed by New York, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where she documented the living conditions of the mentally ill. As part of her efforts to survey the asylums for the insane in the US, she travelled over 60,000 miles, visiting over 9000 affected people by the year 1848. As a direct consequence of her intervention, about 32 state mental hospitals developed or expanded. Dix then succeeded in impressing Queen Victoria to improve the conditions of the asylums in Scotland.

Dix’s thoughts and proposals with regard to the mentally ill were indeed radical for the time. She basically put forth the fact that insanity was a disease and not a crime. She separated the insane as curable and incurable and sought treatment for those labeled curable and comfort for those who can’t be cured.

Dix changed the existing attitude of the people towards the insane. Dix then improved the situation in Canada. Although her efforts to set up big mental care facilities, with the involvement of federal government failed, Dix won worldwide recognition.

Dix then served in the civil war, when she was 59, where she convinced the bureaucracy that women too could be appointed as nurses. Those days there were only male nurses in the army. Her efforts saw about 2000 women enter the army. After the war, she went back to her work with the mentally ill. In 1881 she moved to her quarters in the New Jersey State hospital where she lived till her death in 1887.

Dorothea Dix is perceived as one of the biggest advocate of humanitarian reforms in the 19th century. Although Dix played a huge role in the reforms for the mentally ill, convinced the world that insanity was only a disease, she has been largely neglected in the study of psychology. Among the 53 text books covering the history of psychology her achievements are noted in only five of them. This was because; Dix didn’t contribute to the understanding of the mental disorders. She was only associated with the social aspects of the mental ill people. The annals of psychology might not remember her, but her efforts for the mentally ill and thus for humanity will stand the test of time; which the 53 text books would not.