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HISTORY SEEMS TO BE REPEATING ITSELF.  There is again a substantial number of mentally ill individuals behind bars. In a review of the established literature, studies place the overall prevalence of mental illness in jails . . . (See link above for full article)

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Excerpt from
Dorothea Lynde Dix
by Vasantha Reddi, PhD

An early nursing pioneer, Dorothea Lynde Dix was a noted humanitarian, reformer, educator and crusader. She is perhaps best known for her patient advocacy in fighting to improve the conditions of jails and mental asylums in North America and Europe.

• Early US nursing pioneer--predecessor and contemporary of Florence Nightingale

• Strong advocate for the mentally ill and for prisoners

• Civil War Superintendent of Union Army Nurses

Advocate for the Mentally Ill and for Prisoners

Departing a 24-year career as a school teacher, Dorothea Dix began her second career at the age of 39 when she embarked on a career as a nurse. Dix was not educated as a nurse, but modern nursing did not yet exist. In fact, Dix became one of modern nursing's pioneers, pursuing the core value that drives the provision of all other nursing care: patient advocacy.

In March 1841, she visited the Cambridge House of Corrections to teach Sunday class for women inmates. The scenes she encountered there, which were nearly identical to those at "mental health" facilities she had toured throughout North America and Europe, totally changed her for life. Mentally ill people were kept in the same facilities with prisoners, chained in dark enclosed spaces, lying in their own filth, without adequate clothing, and abused physically and sexually.

Dix took the matter to court and fought serious battles, some of which she won. She then began her drive for improvement of jails and care for the mentally ill throughout Massachusetts.  In 1843, she asked the Massachusetts legislature for reforms to end the inhumane conditions of the mentally ill. In 1845, Dix wrote Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States.  This work discussed the reforms she wanted the government to implement, including the education of prisoners and the separation of various types of offenders.

During the following decades, her tireless crusade extended far and wide, including outside of the United States.  She helped to establish 32 new hospitals in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Maryland. She also helped establish a government hospital, which later became St. Elizabeth's in Washington, D.C.  And between 1843 to 1880--the main years that she spent advocating for the mentally ill--the number of hospitals for the mentally ill increased almost ten-fold, from 13 to 123.  

"Where new institutions were not required, she fostered the reorganization, enlargement, and restaffing--with well-trained, intelligent personnel--of already existing hospitals."  

This achievement indicates that her work led to vast improvements in the fledgling profession of nursing. Her efforts eventually resulted in the founding of special facilities for the insane and destitute in the United States, Canada, and at least 13 European countries. She also sent a document to the United States Congress asking that five million acres be given to be used for the care of the mentally ill. Dix was a woman far ahead of her times, advocating a role for the national government in such care.

Final Years

After the war, Dix dedicated the rest of her life to improving the lives of the mentally ill, before retiring at the age of 82. Her 41 years of empathy for the mentally ill can be summarized in her own words:

"If I am cold, they are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned."

Dorothea Lynde Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia offers the following links on Dorothea Dix at this link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Dix

• Early Life                   
• Antebellum career                 
• Civil War and later years            
• See also                  
• Further reading            
• References                 

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See MENTALLY ILL MISTREATED IN PRISONS, by Human Rights Watch, at this link: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2003/10/22/usdom6472.htm

(Please notify me if any links are redirected. Cointelpro sometimes prevent my links from working and changes my tags.  Tags should be:  Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill, AIMI, Mary Neal, Larry Neal, Dorothea Lynde Dix, Human Rights Watch, Dog Justice, Prison Profiteering )