Asylum Reform Movement

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People are bound in rusty, old chairs with metal chains secured tightly around their writhing bodies, nearly suffocating them. Children are seized and thrown in cages with adult criminals because of petty theft. The mentally ill are locked away in unkempt, congested prison cells, whipped until their raw flesh is trickling with blood for misbehaving. This was how prisons operated. Suddenly, in came people who were known as reformers. They led reform movements that have had a significant impact upon American history. The women’s suffrage movement created a sense of equality between men and women, the temperance movement called for the abstinence of alcohol, but one specific reform has shaped human rights and rehabilitation; the asylum and prison …show more content…
Upon entry, Dix noticed that these cells held an array of criminals; the mentally ill, debtors, prostitutes, children, and murderers. She was concerned that other prisons were identical to the East Cambridge Jail because the idea was incomprehensible that people would treat the mentally ill as if they were criminals. Deciding to visit the prisons throughout Massachusetts, Dix saw the cruelty that lay beyond the prison cells. If she hadn’t gone to the Massachusetts state legislature and petitioned for funding prisons and asylums then there wouldn’t be a safe haven for the mentally ill. Every person, 10 months old to 100 years old, would be confined in those dark and murky prison cells. As a matter of fact, the establishment of asylums was society’s response to the overflowing and unrelenting states that criminals were thoughtlessly put …show more content…
Dorothea Dix inspired the society to be more concerned about the mentally ill by creating specific institutions for them. As of today, there are many facilities that help rehabilitate and reform mentally unstable patients. There are mental hospitals, schools for the feeble minded, schools for the blind, and numerous training facilities for nurses involved in these professions. Unlike the 19th century, there is a division between genuine criminals and the mentally ill within the society of the United States. Rather than finding themselves struggling with rehabilitating those in need, the United States finds itself with a shortage of funds, and a lack of support from the elite members of society. Unlike the United States, many countries continue to have an absence of mental health resources. Patients are lacking support because doctors are facing the same problems. Depression, anxiety, and marital disharmony runs rampant in this world, finding almost every person out there. These doctors often times find themselves stressing over their patients, without ever thinking of themselves, or their own suffering because of stigma or a lack of access to
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