Deinstitutionalization & Community Mental Health Acts 1963

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RESPONSE:

1. Can you give me information on Dorothea Dix , and what is the legal aspects/support services on community mental health acts of 1963?

Some facts on Dorothea Dix are:

? Birth Hampton, Maine on April 4, 1802
? Died July 17, 1878 in Trenton, New Jersey
? Quotes: "In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do." (http://www.east-buc.k12.ia.us/00_01/WH/kp/kp.htm)
? "If I am cold, they are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed;
if I am alone, they are abandoned." - Dorothea Dix
? Dix was a reformer. Her mental health campaign involved, state by state, for the establishment of public asylums supported by state tax dollars.
? Dorothea Dix was the pioneering force in the movement to reform the treatment of the mentally ill in America.
? Over three decades, her advocacy led to the founding of 32 hospitals in 18 states.
? With waves of immigration to the United States in the second half of the 19th century and the opportunity for local communities and families to shift the cost of care of the mentally ill to state-supported facilities, these asylums changed from small therapeutic programs into large custodial public hospitals.
? Concepts of "curability" were replaced by concepts of incurability and chronicity leading to long, if not lifetime, institutional stays (http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/51/5/616).

Some accomplishments:

* Investigated state of Massachusetts and received funds for Worcester State Hospital
* Worked for better living conditions in jails and poorhouses
*Founded 32 mental hospitals, 15 schools, 1 school for blind
* Assisted in founding hospitals and libraries
*Superintendent of Union Army Nurses in Civil War (http://lbbaby210.tripod.com/).

Some other history about Dorothea Dix:

? Father Joseph Dix: abusive and alcoholic
? Mother: bad mental health so Dorothea took care of younger siblings
? Opened "a little dame school" at the age of fifteen. She ran and taught at this school for three years.

? 1822- 1836 Dix taught two classes and started to write children's books
? Visited East Cambridge Jail and saw terrible conditions
? Sunday, March 28, 1841 was a raw cold day in Boston. Dorothea had volunteered to teach a Sunday School class of twenty women inmates at the Cambridge, Massachusetts jail.
? After the lesson was over, she walked through the prison with strong objections from the jailer.
? Dorothea went down to the lower level of the building, called the dungeon cells where insane were chained.
? She saw miserable, wild and stuporous men and women chained to walls and locked into pens-naked, filthy, brutalized, underfed, given no heat, sleeping on stone floors.
? It was this visit that started Dorothea on her life's work to improve conditions for the mentally ill.
? At once she started a campaign to have stoves placed in the cells and to have the inmates fully clothed.
? She found she had to fight ...