Project Roadmap Timeline

Reform Efforts (1840s - 1850s)

• Dix travelled across the United States • Investigated prisons and mental hospitals to gather evidence • Reported conditions to state governments

National Mental Hospital (1852)

• Asked Congress to support mental hospitals • Helped create Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C • Today known as St. Elizabeths Hospital • Helped established better care for mentally ill people

Civil War Leadership (1861)

• Became Superintendent of Army Nurses • Organized and trained nurses • Helped care for Union soldiers

Discovery of Prison Conditions (1841)

• Dix visited the East Cambridge Jail in Massachusetts • Saw mentally ill prisoners treated poorly • People chained, abused, and kept with criminals • Shocked Dix and inspired her to start fighting for better treatment

Legacy (1865 - 1887)

• Continue advocating for mental health reform • Died July 17, 1887 • Helped the creation of 32 hospitals

Early Life (1802 - 1830s)

•Dix was born in April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine •Father was mostly absent from her childhood and mother was disabled •Cared for her younger brothers and her grandmother at a young age •Opened a school for girls at just 15 years old, but had to abandon it later on in 1836 due to an illness