Mental illness/Prison Mental illness/Prison ReformReformBy: Ben Kue, Colton S, Colin S, EmmaE.

Key PeopleKey PeopleDorothea Dix (Main Leader) She also convinced state legislators to design more safe and cleaner prisons. She wrote letters to inform the government of harsh torturing and living

conditions the prisoners endured. After she wrote the letters she convinced the government that mentally ill

people were not insane.

Dr. John Galt Dr. John Galt worked at the only publicly supported psychiatrics hospital at

Williamsburg, Virginia in 1841 called Eastern Lunatic Asylum He also enlighten the approach to the use of drugs through a new type of

therapy known as “talk therapy”

Thomas KirkBride Born into a Quaker family, KirkBride had began his study in medicine in 1831. His training and experience interning at Friend’s Asylum and at Philadelphia’s

Pennsylvania Hospital.

Louis Dwight Dwight was also the founder of the Boston Prison Disciplinary Society. He spread the Auburn System throughout America’s jails.

Thomas Kirkbride Dr. John Galt

Dorothea Dix

AccomplishmentsAccomplishments Over the years Dorothea Dix convinced the state legislature to

build new, more sanitary, and more humane prisons Dix helped make prisons more sanitary and she got more people

to clean the prisons every day. She had founded 32 mental hospitals, 15 schools and one was

for the blind. Dorothea helped influence the separation of women, men, and

children in prisons. Thanks to Dorothea Dix prisons were more humane and were

not chained together in crowded prison cells.

GoalsGoals The prison’s were apllaling to Dorothea, people were confined in

cages, closets, cellars, and chained to the walls. Dorothea had wanted this to stop.

Dix and other people in the movement believed that the mentally-ill needed treatment, and care; not punishment, and being whipped into obedience.

Wanted to create public asylums for the mentally ill. No debtors to be put into prisons. They were already to full. Demanded justice for mentally-ill.

MethodsMethods After witnessing these conditions she immediately took the

matter to the courts Finally she put together all this data and shaped a carefully

worded document to be delivered to the Massachusetts legislature

She made careful and extensive notes as she visited with jailers, caretakers and townspeople

Once she had succeeded she traveled to other states and proceeded doing the same process: extensive travel to jails and almshouses in a state, careful descriptions of conditions in jails and almshouses, and preparation of a document comparable to the one which proved successful in Massachusetts

She sent a document to the United States Congress asking that five million acres be set aside and to be used for the care of the mentally ill

BibliographyBibliographyhttp://www.ushistory.org/us/26d.asp

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