BANGOR (AP) – Bangor Mental Health Institute has a new name.

Gov. John Baldacci and hospital administrators celebrated Wednesday’s transformation into the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center, which invokes the name of the Hampden native and social reformer who served as an advocate for the mentally ill in the 1800s.

Dix, who lived from 1802 to 1887, exposed the degrading and inhumane conditions under which the mentally ill were kept in Europe and America.

By reporting her findings to lawmakers and others in power, Dix succeeded in changing the treatment and living conditions of the mentally ill, establishing publicly funded institutions to get them off the streets and out of the prisons.

Local legend has it that she advocated putting the Augusta state mental hospital directly across the Kennebec River from the State House so that lawmakers and bureaucrats could not ignore the plight of those receiving treatment there.