Dorothea Dix

Psychology research papers study Dorothea Dix in light of her achievements for mental health services. Paper Masters can custom write a research paper on Dorothea Dix for you for any course that you need at the college level.

Dorothea Lynde Dix changed the world. She did it because her perceptions were different from most of her contemporaries.

• Dorothea Dix perceived man's inhumanity to man in the barbaric treatment of mental illness in private and public institutions in nineteenth century America.
• Because of her character, drive and vision, Dix translated her perceptions into action and changed the world's perceptions of the treatment of the mentally ill.
• Research papers credit Dix with a finely tuned sense of discernment that was valuable self-examination as well as to evaluate others.

Why it took this particular woman at this particular time to see who lay hidden in American closets, jail cells, almshouses, basements, attics and sheds, namely the deranged, depressed, lunatic, and maniacal human beings is debatable.

Dorothea Dix's Childhood

Her childhood angst and unhappiness may have provided the impetus that caused her to take the side of the oppressed. On the other hand, children with her same background sometimes grow up to be the oppressors. Therefore, it is clear that Dix was born into a particular set of circumstances, connections and conditions, which made it possible for her to move forward with her plan. No one knows if someone else might have been as moved as she to go into action on behalf of the suffering masses of the insane. What matters is that this extraordinary woman moved in extraordinary ways to make significant changes in the perception and treatment of the mentally ill. One research papers called it a revolution. She is recorded in history (albeit sparsely) not as a revolutionary, but as a reformer. Behind a reformer there must burn a passion that won't be dampened, a vision more powerful than self, and a will to remove all obstacles to the goal. Once Dix found her mission, she did not waver from doing everything in her power to fulfill that mission for as long as she lived.

Dorothea Dix's Mission

She was not a medical doctor, a trained nurse, a psychologist, a politician, or a man, facts that may have kept her in relative historical obscurity. These facts, however, did not deter Dix from working through a male-dominated world of politics and social institutions to get the changes she wanted for the humane treatment of society's mentally ill. Her perceptions of her self and the society in which she was born were different from other people born into a similar world at the same time, and with the same inhumane conditions. Dix saw and acted. Like Caesar, she came, she saw and she conquered. In this regard, Dix was a flag-bearing warrior who never wavered in her path to victory.