Dorothea Dix

By in Leadership

Dorothea Dix: A Voice For The Suffering Who Cannot Be Heard

By Melissa Borowicki, Wagner College ’16

“I come to present the strong daims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast, I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane and idiotic men and women; of beings, sunk to a condition from which the most unconcerned would start with real horror; of beings wretched in our prisons, and more wretched in our Alms-Houses. And I cannot suppose it needful to employ earnest persuasion, or stubborn argument in order to arrest and fix attention upon a subject only the more strongly pressing in its claims, because it is revolting and disgusting in its details.”

Growing up with a mother of mental health problems it came very close to Dorothea’s heart when she visited the jail in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1841 and saw the conditions of the patients. Dorothea had already devoted her life to helping people; she had formed a girls school, wrote a book, and was volunteering to teach women at jail. She then came across the mentally ill just living alongside criminals. The mental patients were found in terrible dirty conditions. Some were naked, chained to the filthy and freezing floors. Dorothea new that she had to be the one to speak up and get the people the proper conditions of treatment they deserve.

Key Events

  1. Dorothea started a school in Boston for poor girls to receive an education while also having classes for wealthier girls because she wanted to offer her help to anyone willing to accept it.
  2.  After seeing the conditions of a jail in East Cambridge, Massachusetts she inspected many mental institutions and wrote to the state legislature which resulted in the founding of hospitals for the insane with acceptably safe and healthy conditions for the patients all over the US and other countries.
  3. She was named Superintendent of Nurses during the Civil War in 1861 and remained in that position for 5 years.

Leadership Lesson

Dorothea has made so many differences in society. she was such a humanitarian that however much she was helping was never enough. She went from teaching, to opening a school, to teaching sunday school and when she saw conditions of the mentally ill she didn’t just keep quiet and continue teaching, she spoke up, wrote to the legislature and made a change that the entire country would soon be effected by. When the civil war began she changed her career again and became a nurse to help in the country’s time of need. Dorothea never stopped changing and adjusting her skills to help out people in need and that’s what made her such an amazing leader.

Bibliography

Ghareeb, LaDonna. “Dix, Dorothea (Informational Paper).” Learning to Give. http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper89.html (accessed December 1, 2012).

Gollaher, David L. “Dorothea Dix and the English origins of the American asylum movement.” Canadian Review Of American Studies 23, no. 3 (Spring1993 1993): 149. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 1, 2012).

“I Tell What I Have Seen”–The Reports of Asylum Reformer Dorothea Dix.” American Journal Of Public Health 96, no. 4 (April 2006): 622-624.Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 3, 2012).

Parry, Manon S. “Dorethea Dix (1802-1887).” American Journal of Public Health, April 2006., 624-625, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 1, 2012).

See H. E. Marshall, Dorothea Dix: Forgotten Samaritan (1937,repr. 1967); S. C. Beach, Daughters of the Puritans (1967); F. Tiffany, Life of DorotheaLynde Dix (repr. 1971); D. C. Wilson, Stranger and Traveler: The Story of Dorothea Dix, American Reformer (1975); D. Gallaher, Voice for the Mad (1995).