Out of sight, out of mind: Mental illness behind bars

摘要

In the 1840s, Dorothea Dix traveled the country confronting state legislatures about the unconscionable treatment of prisoners and urging, in particular, the building of hospitals for those with psychiatric illness. By the 1880s, there were 75 psychiatric hospitals in the United States, and a survey estimated that less than 1% of prisoners had mental illness (1). For the next 90 years, it was widely accepted in the United States that people with mental illness belonged in hospitals rather than prisons.