Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix made life for the mentally ill grand compared to how it was before she took interest in their health and well being. Dorothea Dix was the first American to take interest in how the mentally ill were treated and spoke out about it. Dorothea Dix was a woman making a change in a time where woman were still not equal to men. She was one of the few women who spoke out against something during her time period. Dorothea Dix was the start of the interest in the human brain and its defects. If it wasn’t for Dorothea Dix speaking out for mentally challenged rights and fair treatment there would have been no interest taken into them anytime soon. Thanks to Dorothea Dix we now are politically correct when talking about the mentally ill and there are medicines and special treatment for them, even special, safe and tender housing places especially for them. Dorothea Dix was brought up in a very strict religious Methodist family. So when Dorothea Dix moved with her grandmother to Boston and then with her aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts where she began to teach at age 14. After teaching for a few years in Massachusetts Dorothea Dix Move back to Boston with her grandmother and founded the Dix Mansion, a school for girls, along with a charity school that poor girls could attend for free. Soon she began to write books such as Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824. In 1841 Dorothea Dix began to teach Sunday school in East Cambridge Jail, a women’s prison. What Dorothea Dix found in the prison was very disturbing. Dorothea Dix found that some of the tattered inmates were chained in a filthy, cold cell simply because they were mentally ill. She began to document all the cruel treatment these inmates had to endure and with the help of some powerful men she convinced the legislatures with her findings to enlarge the state mental institution in Worcester and practice more gentle treatment. After Dorothea Dix found out the truth to these so called mental