Dorthea Dix and Her Contributions to Health Reform by Kelsey Kehlenbeck

Dorothea Dix was a public health reformer. She possessed the desire to improve mental institutions and the treatment of patients with mental and emotional disorders. Dix first experienced the treatment of mental patients when working as a teacher in the East Cambridge jail in 1841. She was disturbed to see that people with mental illnesses were housed with criminals. This led Dix to push for a reform for more pleasant accommodations for people suffering mental illnesses. Through her efforts she attempted to persuade legislation, funding, and the regulation of public institutions. 

Dix began her mission by expanding her knowledge of mental disorders with the help of other reformers, Philipe Pinel, Benjamin Rush, and William Tuke. She then set out to visit and investigate jails and almshouses all over Massachusetts. She found the living conditions in the jails to be unbearable. The facilities were overcrowded, the mentally ill were chained in cellars, they were forced to sit in their own excrement, and many suffered from the cold. Proper nutrition and exercise was seldom given to the patients. 

In 1843, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe presented Dix’s studies to the Massachusetts legislature. Funds were given by the legislatures to expand the State Mental Hospital at Worcester. Dix continued her work by investigating other jails and almshouses in other states. She found more successes in other states like she did in Massachusetts.

Her next goal was to create a comfortable institution for the mentally ill and challenged.  Dix decided that a federal land-grant of 12,500,000 acres should be set aside for public housing and resources for the blind, deaf, mute, and mentally insane. She fought to persuade the Senate and the House of Representatives from 1848- 1854 to accept her proposal. President Millard Fillmore was in favor of her proposal. However, Fillmore’s term ended before he had the chance to approve of her proposal. The next president in office, Franklin Pierce, vetoed Dix’s bill. 

After the rejection of her proposal, Dix traveled to Europe in 1854. While in Europe she realized that the conditions of public hospitals were far worse that the hospitals for the wealthy. She traveled to countries In Europe to investigate public facilities. Dix spread the awareness of the poor medical facilities in Europe like she had done in the United State. Pope Pius IX sided with Dix and was able to make improvements in public hospitals.