Mab Segrist
Appearances
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
And Dorothea Dix is one of the heroines of the humane treatment of insane people in institutions, especially this Kirkbride model, which was supposed to kind of separate out and bring them in. It's a whole architecture of sanity in that way.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
She, in fact, is very, I would say, virulently anti-Black racist. Dorothea Dix didn't like Black people. And she thought that insane people were treated worse than Black people. So Southern legislators loved her.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Starts off is a story about Enlightenment optimism. And it starts in Europe and it comes to this country.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Doctors start to believe that you can heal the troubled mind if you change the environment. If you put them in a beautiful place and you give them doctors who pay attention and listen to them, you give them good nutrition, you give them a beautiful setting, and you give them some occupational therapy, then they'll get better.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
It's called the moral therapy, and that you could cure people by changing structures, which is a very progressive idea. And, you know, like we can really cure insanity with these different hospitals.
Under Yazoo Clay
Ever True to Thee
Reading about Dorothea Dix was very instructive to me on the relationships of mental hospitals in the South versus the North, in an environment of growing abolition.