Dorothea Dix (jan 1, 1843 – jan 1, 1880)

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Dorothea Dix was a former Massachusetts school teacher and she was terrified of seeing mentally ill people locked up alongside convicted criminals in filthy cells. Dix embarked on a cross-country campaign to bring attention to the inhuman treatment she had received. Then, in the 1840s, one state legislature after another built new mental institutions or enlarged existing ones. As a result, psychiatric patients began to accept the specialized care they needed. Dix is significant during this time period because she was effective in creating the first wave of American mental asylums and she was successful in persuading the legislature to invest the time and resources necessary to change the situation of the suffering ill people. She was also able to convince that the mentally ill were actually trapped by their own malfunctioning brains, rather than being in the wrong or willfully sinning.

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