Understanding The Ill

 

Dorothea Dix was a nurse  who saw the horrifying conditions that the mentally ill lived when they were placed in prisons and almshouses and wanted to change it. In the prisons the mentally ill had “… unsuitable connections with criminals…adverse to the own physical and moral development…outrage upon humanity.” (pg 1-2) She fought for the rights of all mentally ill when she worked for prison reform and spoke to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1843. Her reasoning for that speech was to give the legislatures a clear explanation of the troubles of the mentally ill in prisons. She hoped the Legislature would change the law about sending the ill to prisons with criminals. The source is a primary document Dated January 1843 and gives the street that the speech was given on , Mount Vernon Street in Boston Massachusetts. The document gives pages of examples of mistreatment of the mentally ill, then called idiots and insane. It describes them being chained, beaten, sleeping in stalls and even wandering the streets alone. She told the audience that they would hear words and stories that would make them uncomfortable and were difficult for her to say, but they were true, graphic and necessary. Dix thought mentally ill should not be treated as criminals. She believed they needed medical care, jobs and people to care for them and about them.

The document does tell us both sides of the issue. She mentions that it is not the fault of those working in prisons or almshouses that these people are poorly cared for ,but the state and the staff and legislatures inexperience with mental health. She even realizes that most of the Legislature had no idea of what goes on in the prisons. She understands there are few “asylums” for the mentally ill to live in, but she would blame the Legislature for not doing anything from the time that she spoke to them . “You have the ability to use your position as lawmaker to change this problem…Your action upon this subject will affect the present and future condition of hundereds and of thousands.” (p31)

Dorthea Dix, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts 1843, in the archive.org, accessed January 11, 2015, http://www.archive.org/stream/memorialtolegisl00dixd#page/n4/mode/1up.