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"Apostle to the Insane"

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Dorothea Dix was born in 1802 and did not have a very good childhood. According to    , "She was a devout Unitarian and  embraced their religious commitment to work for the good of society" (Mass Humanities, 2020).

When Dix was 39 she went to work at a jail outside of Boston where she saw the insane housed with criminals in horrible conditions. This feeling of outrage set her on her path to social advocacy. (Barusch, 2018, p. 235)

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Dix would go state to state to establish asylums for people with mental illness. She would meet with policy elites and members of state legislatures after visiting prisons and almshouses to present her findings and encourage them to expand or build institutions. (Barusch, 2018, p. 235)

Between 1840 and 1860 Dix was instrumental in founding or expanding 31 asylums for people with mental illness (Barusch, 2018, p. 236). This is where the new specialty of work called "Psychiatric Social Work" was born. (Barusch, 2018)

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The expansion lasted until 1955 and started to spiral downward as institutions were overpopulated and no cures were being made available to them. The Asylums then became places of despair instead of a place for rehabilitation, a last resort for those with no other options (Barusch, 2018).

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Barusch, A. S. (2018). Foundations of social policy: Social justice in human perspective (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Mass Humanities. (2020).  March 28, 1841 Dorothea Dix Begins Her Crusade. Retrieved from https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/dorothea-dix-begins-her-crusade.html