Reference no: EM133951385

Question

Dorothea Dix was born in 1802. In 1821, Dorothea Dix became a schoolteacher and opened an elementary school at her grandmother's home (Parry, 2006). It is said perhaps all the stress and workload took a toll and Dix started getting sick very frequently. She ended up experiencing a mental breakdown during this time. Dix's bad health ended her teaching career. She started to focus more on mental illness and people who were inhumanely treated. By 1836, Dorothea spent a lot of time visiting as many private and public facilities she could access and would document the conditions (History.com Editors, 2009). Dorothea found that most prisoners were inhumanely treated by being starved, chained, and abused by their keepers. Prisons did not have any regulations and criminals were often housed with the mentally ill. Dorothea took her discoveries to the legislature of Massachusetts requesting reform. Due to this, funds were set aside for expansion of the state mental hospital.

Dorothea Dix is also well known for supervising and organizing the Union Army hospital nurses during the civil war. She was the first woman to serve in a such a high capacity in a federally appointed role (History.com Editors, 2009). After the war ended, Dix continued to help with mental illness reform. Many new hospitals that were later built were founded with the principles she started. Dorothea Dix is a considered a change agent because due to her resilience, she was able to facilitate and start a change in the treatment of mental illness. Her teachings had great influence on implementing regulation in prison conditions and humane treatment of the mentally ill.

After taking the Myers Briggs personality and stress test, it shows I am slightly more introverted than extroverted. That I "feel" more than I think and that I use my senses more than my intuition. I feel like this is very different than Dorothea Dix because of all the things she achieved. She comes off as more extroverted because she was a leader and was able to talk to so many people without backing down from her ideals. I can learn a lot from Dorothea Dix's ideas and apply it to myself and my career. She didn't let people change her mind and fought for what was right. Dorothea Dix was an exemplary role model that I think a lot of people could learn something from.