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Featured Article Of The Week

Dorothea Dix Hospital


DDix Hosp Hist1.jpg

In the autumn of 1848 when Dorothea Lynde Dix came to North Carolina, attitudes toward mental illness in this state, like the scanty facilities, remained generally quite primitive. Nevertheless, the North Carolina Legislature was not unaware of the concept of a state hospital for the mentally ill. Earlier in 1825 a resolution had been passed requesting information needed to plan for the establishment of a "lunatic asylum". Nothing came of it then, and again in 1838-1839 action stirred in this regard with no concrete results. In 1844, Governor Morehead strongly recommended that the state build institutions for the unfortunate insane, blind and deaf; but the issue died without positive action. So things stood still in the fall of 1848 with Delaware and North Carolina remaining the two states of the original thirteen which had no state institution for the mentally ill.

Dorothea toured North Carolina. The conditions for the mentally ill that she found in 36 North Carolina counties were much the same as in other states, ranging from extremely poor to above average, with a census of about a thousand mentally ill in jails, poorhouses and private homes. She returned to Raleigh and compiled the information she had gathered into a "memorial" which she hoped to present to the legislature.

The report submitted to the legislature was a county-by-county report on her findings. She emphasized the need to remove the insane from jails for their own benefit and that of other inmates. Dorothea had a practical approach as well as an idealistic one. She listed costs in other states and economies that had been achieved. She recommended "moderate employment, moderate exercise" among the approaches to the treatment of the mentally ill, along with specifics of buildings and equipment.Click here for more...