BANGOR – Why change the name of the Bangor Mental Health Institute? Rep. Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, says it’s a matter of respect – respect for Mainers with mental illness as well as for the Maine-born woman who championed their cause throughout the United States and Europe.

Faircloth has sponsored a proposal to change the name of the Bangor Mental Health Institute and its sprawling campus to the Dorothea Dix Center for Public Service. At a public hearing before the Health and Human Services Committee Tuesday, Faircloth told lawmakers it’s time for Maine to honor Dix, who grew up in Hampden, just eight miles from Bangor.

More than anything else, Dix is known for her long crusade against the inhumane treatment of the mentally ill during the last part of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. In this country as well as in Europe, she played a major role in improving conditions, lifting stigma and advocating for therapeutic treatment instead of warehousing. Dix was instrumental in establishing more than 30 public and private mental health institutions.

Here in Maine, it was Dix who in the late 1890s insisted that the Augusta Mental Health Institute be built directly across the river from the State House. That way, she argued, legislators and policy-makers would every day be reminded to take into consideration the needs of their fellow Mainers with mental illness. AMHI was last year replaced with a more modern facility and renamed Riverview Psychiatric Center. Located on the same campus, though, it remains in clear view of the State House.

At Tuesday’s hearing, BMHI Superintendent Mary Louise McEwen said calling the Bangor hospital “the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center” would be more in keeping with its new Augusta counterpart. Attaching Dix’s name to the hospital alone would allow the rest of the BMHI campus, which contains several other state offices, a veterans’ home and other facilities, to assume another name, McEwen said.

Rep. Sarah Lewin, R-Eliot, said she would be unable to support the bill. Dix was well-known for her modesty and several times during her lifetime turned down opportunities to have facilities named after her, Lewin pointed out.

“She was not a self-serving person,” Lewin said. “I could never support this [bill] because it dishonors her wishes.” Lewin suggested a small memorial garden or park on the BMHI grounds would be a more fitting tribute to Dix.

After the hearing, Faircloth responded that Dix’s reputation for modesty should be appreciated, but should not derail the opportunity to inspire “a new century of progressive mental health services.”

The bill is scheduled to be fine-tuned and voted out of committee next week.