Education: Lesson Details



Objectives

1. To understand the origins of Dorothea Dix's reform efforts in the mid-1800s to shift responsibility for care of the indigent insane from local prisons and almshouses to professionally managed insane asylums at the state level.

2. To examine public care for people with cognitive and psychiatric disabilities in the mid-1800s and to analyze the causes and consequences of shifting definitions of mental disabilities.

3. To identify how Dix and like-minded social reformers appealed to the conscience and sense of responsibility of both the public and politicians during this period.