Portal:Featured Article Of The Week
Featured Article Of The Week
Dorothea Dix Hospital
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 that had no state institution for the mentally ill. Click here for more...
