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Sarah Vlazny Dorothea Dix Reform for the mentally ill

Dorothea Dix ran away from home at the age of twelve to escape her alcoholic family and abusive father. When she was thirty-four she traveled to England and was influenced by social reformers and the British lunacy reform movement. This inspired her to investigate how her home state of Massachusetts cared for the insane poor.
 * Criticisms and Goals **

Upon traveling through Massachusetts, she discovered how bleak the conditions were for those who were insane. There was no real system for handling them; local officials would simply contract those who had no known relatives to live with local families. The mentally ill were abused harshly. Dorothea wrote to the state legislature, saying, “ I proceed, Gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.” Her moving words successful in securing a bill to expand the state mental hospital.
 * Methods and Successes **

From there she moved on to states from New Hampshire to Louisiana, observing the conditions of the insane and working with state legislatures to get the bills and funds needed to build asylums. She was successful in establishing mental institutions in Illinois, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The real trophy of her work, however, was the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane. It was to set aside 12,225,000 acres of Federal land, the majority for the benefit of the insane and the remainder for the “blind, deaf, and dumb.” Dorothea was crushed, however, when President Franklin Pierce vetoed it on the principle that social welfare should be left up to the states. In addition to her legislative work, Dorothea also helped to dispel the stigma attached to those who were insane. It was thought by the public at that time that insane people chose to be perverse and crazy. Through Dorothea Dix’s work, more and more people began to see it as an illness rather than a character flaw.

Dorothea Dix could have done wonderful things with federal and presidential assistance. Had her Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane passed, it would have provided immense relief to the mentally ill community. Federal funds could have provided for asylums, hospitals, and research. Legislature as well was vitally needed. There needed to be additional laws set in place to prevent the mistreatment of those who were mentally ill. It needed to enforce the fair treatment of insane persons in private homes as well as public places, to ensure that patients in asylums and mental hospitals were being treated fairly. Perhaps the most important measure that needed to be taken by the law was the prevention of cruel jailing of those who were insane.
 * Federal and Presidential Assistance **

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and attendee of the Constitutional convention, was the “Father of American Psychiatry,” and worked to get mental patients out of chains and dungeons and into mental hospital wards. Dr. John Galt opened the first publicly-supported mental hospital in Williamsburg Virginia. He pioneered the use of drugs and “talk therapy” to treat mental illness in the United States.
 * References **

Works Cited "Dorothea Dix speaks out on behalf of the Insane (1848) primary source document with guided question | Historymartinez's Blog." Historymartinez's Blog | Just another WordPress.com site. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. . "Prison and Asylum Reform [ushistory.org]." ushistory.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. . berry. "Benjamin Rush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Rush