Born in Hamden Maine in April of 1802, Dorthea Dix was a healthcare worker and mental health advocate. Starting her career as an educator in Boston extremely young, after moving to her grandmothers to escape parental violence, she began developing curriculum and teaching girls in her class at the age of 14. In 1821 Dix opened up her first school for girls of upper class families and later opened one for the poor in her grandmother's barn. Dix faced poor health in the years that followed and had to shut down her schools; it has been speculated by scholars that she may have had some form of major depressive disorder that contributed to her recurring illness. After opening and closing another school in 1836 for the same reasons, Dix was advised by doctors and friends to visit Europe to get some fresh sea air. It was here in England while interacting with some social reformers (including Betsy Fry, a notable activist for prison reform), and teaching in a women's prison in East Cambridge where she found all prisoners were not receiving medical care and three women were locked in the basement, that she discovered her calling for changes to our systems surrounding mental health, known at the time as “lunacy reform.” Dix returned to the states in 1841 and set to work touring hospitals and prisons in Massachusetts to collect data for her political work.

While Dix did good work towards reforming hospitals and cutting down the use of corporal punishment as well as isolation, confinement and restraints, she was not very progressive in terms of gender and racial politics. In her first piece of writing on the topic, Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature (1843), Dix attempts to express both credibility and sympathy from her audience by evoking her womanly nature as a source of power and knowledge but making it clear that she is not at all above the men this piece is for while also highlighting white feminine fragility as a reason to support her cause; “Men of Massachusetts, I beg, I implore, I demand pity and protection for these of my suffering, outraged sex. Fathers, husbands, brothers, I would supplicate you for this boon; but what do I say? I dishonor you, divest you at once of Christianity and humanity, does this appeal imply distrust. If it comes burdened with a doubt of your righteousness in this legislation, then blot it out; while I declare confidence in your honor, not less than your humanity…Become the benefactors of your race, the just guardians of the solemn rights you hold in trust.” (Dix, pg. 24-25) 

Witnessing slavery first hand when acting as a governess in St. Croix and not seeming to connect the suffering of those enslaved to that of the mentally ill in captivity; Dix even held the opinion, in her first political work, that the auctioning off of the sick, old and poor was not any more harmful than the existing conditions they live in “Why should we not sell people as well as otherwise blot out human rights: it is only being consistent. Surely not worse than chaining and caging naked lunatics upon public roads or burying them in closets and cellars.” (Dix, pg 22) Dix goes on in this section to describe the case of a “mad, idiotic” young woman and how her life improved after she was purchased by an older couple and given tasks to accomplish (they even extended her chain so it ran to the kitchen). In 1847, Dix is quoted as saying "The Negro and the Indian rarely become subject to the malady of insanity, as neither do the uncivilized tribes and clans of European Russia and Asia. Insanity is the malady of civilized and cultivated life, and sections and communities whose nervous energies are most roused and nourished." (Jackson, pg 6)  There appears to be a huge disconnect in Dix’s understanding of human rights/who’s pain matters. 

When thinking about Dix's work in modern context I cannot help but think about how she would feel about the current state of mental healthcare. As someone who works in a mental hospital setting, picturing her there is fascinating to me, I think she might have gotten along well with a few of the nurses. The belief that the mentally ill deserve fair treatment is not the same as acknowledging their humanity. I also think of her in regards to the recent legislation that failed to pass in Maine that would allow those under legal guardianships to participate in democracy by giving them the ability to vote. Looking at Dix's work we can see the ideals we still hold in western society that those of differing mental capabilities are to be pitied and cared for, a concept that led to her success in establishing facilities, but are also to be kept somewhat separate and not to be taken seriously.

References:

Dix, D. L. (1843). Memorial to the legislature of Massachusetts. Boston. 

Manning, S. W. (1962). The tragedy of the ten-million-acre bill. Social Service Review, 36(1), 44–50. https://doi.org/10.1086/641182 

Jackson, V. (n.d.). Separate and Unequal: The Legacy of Racially Segregated Psychiatric Hospitals A Cultural Competence Training Tool. ms, Atlanta, Georgia.

Parry MS. Dorothea Dix (1802–1887). Am J Public Health. 2006 Apr;96(4):624–5. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2005.079152. 

Michel, S. (1994). Dorthea Dix; or, the Voice of the Maniac. Discourse, 17(2), 48–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389368