histmental2021

“How many people do you think throughout history were diagnosed as schizophrenic, psychotic, bipolar, or maybe just plain crazy when they had something that could’ve been so easily diagnosed?” For my mental health related movie/tv show project, I decided to watch the movie Brain on Fire that was released in 2016. This movie is biographical and is […]

For my digital project, I am writing about the impact of Dorothea Dix’s crusades in Massachusetts in order to understand why she was considered a successful reformer. One thing from the beginning that I noticed was that after her time in MA, her name was known pretty widely, but I hope to understand what specifically […]

Following her successful crusade in Massachusetts, Dorothea Dix traveled around the United States on a mission to improve the conditions in other asylums and institutions. This memorial letter written by Dix and given to Congress, is one asking for land to be given by the United States government to help the “numerous and increasing class […]

When sifting through sources to find out more about Dorothea Dix’s background, I stumbled upon this New York Times article titled, “Flowers of New England.” It is a piece from a book titled Three Wise Virgins, and wove together the stork of three important New-England women. It is interesting how the author weaves these women […]

HERE is my research proposal for the semester!

I am studying and researching something that we have talked about shortly in class: Dorothea Lynde Dix’s campaigns for the mentally ill. A site that has proven to be vital for my research has been the U.S. National Library of Medicine, where I have been able to find a lot of relevant primary sources relating […]

Along with having an impact on states in the northeast, Dorothea Dix also sought change in Tennessee as well. In her Memorial to the State of Tennessee, she sought improvements for accommodations of the mentally insane by the creation of a new hospital. Talking about the conditions of the spaces she had seen as well […]

Years down the road in (hopefully) post-pandemic times, history will write about our time in quarantine as something that would happen once in a lifetime. But, having lived and experienced it, how has mental health changed for some people? And, how will historians talk about it in the future? The loneliness and isolation that came […]

Through all of the research I have done as a student here, it has always been focused on women, and I didn’t want this class to be any exception. I had heard her name in passing before, but this past week I did a deep dive into who Dorothea “Dragon” Dix was and what she […]

Mentioned briefly in one of our Wikipedia readings last week, the Penrose Hypothesis “proposes an inverse relationship between the relative number of psychiatric beds available to a population and it’s total number of prisoners”. Through various forms of research in many different countries, Mark Toynbee’s paper discovers that with a reduction of psychiatric beds comes […]