A First Rate Madness : Uncovering The Links Between Leadership And Mental Health

“At its heart, the question of whether the same can be distinguished from the insane (and whether degrees of insanity can be distinguished from each other) is a simple matter: Do the salient characteristics that lead to a diagnosis reside in the patients themselves or in the environment and context in which observers find them?” (Rosenhan 1)

(2015). Insanity Defense: Past, Present, and Future. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 37(4) ProQuest, Accessed 12 March 2017. This article focuses on the past, present and future of insanity defense. It is also based on the assumption that at the time the crime was committed, the defendant was not suffering from severe mental illness and therefore, was incapable of differentiating right from wrong behavior and making them not legally accountable for the crime. This is a good and interesting article to me also because its easy to understand and read. This article gets straight to the point and gives full information of what the author is trying to say. I will be using this article in my project because I feel that with having a past, present and future article that is involved with insanity defense it will create good background for my reader and will be very interesting to read

Over the years the abuse of insanity plea, has troubled our American Justice System in our world today. The growth in this defense has increased so much that the expansion has asked the question; whether or not insanity plea is a worthy and justified defense to be used in the courts. The Insanity defense is when a criminal defendant can be found to have been legally insane when that defendant committed the crime they did at the time. In some cases, the criminal defendant pleads insane and gets a less severe punishment due to their ruling of having a mental impairment. In the court system, the trial procedure for pleading insane is straight forward with its steps and rulings whether or not the criminal is guilty or not.

Confidence, social competency, and motivation are some of the characteristics great leaders have. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Randle McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, are two emotionally intelligent leaders who are always in close competition with one another. Yes, they are FOILS of each other; only one person can command the ward. Furthermore, in a psychiatric ward where Acutes, grown men in the ward who are emotionally capable of their emotions and actions, and Chronics who have no emotional control and are subject to electroshock therapy, are under strong control of Nurse Ratched before McMurphy becomes a patient. McMurphy then brings hope and leadership to most of the men by demanding to see the World Series baseball game, taking the men fishing, introducing them to prostitutes, and other rebellious acts.

An individual can psyche himself or herself on believing that a prescribed drug given from pharmaceutical doctors are making them feel better. Madness in today’s world can be covered up by those medications, unless everyone is brainwashed in believing that it can. In present society, medicine given to people to “treat” them for certain mental illnesses is normal to see. In the nineteenth century, people who suffered from mental madness had to deal with the insanity, such as depression or hearing voices, without any help. They had to go through the pain, while everyone else watched them, and those who had no problems judged them. In the past, a person was looked down on if someone else noticed problems with that individual. This created many people to try and hide their madness, so others would think they were normal. Those who believed they were safe from this psychological illness had not received any detrimental problem in their life to unleash it. Erik Larson’s novel, The Devil in the White City, foreshadows the characteristic of madness in many of the characters. Larson reveals in his novel that it does not matter what type of individual you are because everyone has some sort of madness inside of her or him, waiting to be revealed.

This paper is going to explain the research that I have done on the insanity defense in general, my own opinion on the use of pleading insanity, a recent case on the successful pleading of insanity to prevent a defendant from being criminally responsible, and the positives and negatives of the insanity defense. I am also going to do my best to explain what should happen to a criminal defendant after they are declared by the courts to be insane, as well citing all of my research.

Have you ever wondered what they did on multiple occasions with psychotic criminals up for sentencing in a court proceeding? In this paper it will clarify that answer, and much more in the final say in mentally ill individuals. The final decision in being mentally ill in a court proceeding is formally known as the Insanity defense plea. The Insanity defense plea is an act of protection for criminals who are not aware of their criminal conduct in sentencing from a judge. In this paper it will begin by explaining the history of the Insanity plea, and how it came about in today’s society of criminals. Next, the paper will educate readers on the process a mentally ill person goes through in order to be protected within this defense.

Insanity is a permissible concept that consists of the courtroom purpose that a human is not qualified of creating mindful intent and cannot be held guilty for a criminal act. No human should be exempted of law-breaking or any other offense on the foundation of opinion decreed by psychiatric or mental health experts. Excusing a human of responsibility for a criminal act is an act of lawful humanity impersonating as an act of medical science. In addition, one who is merciful or merciless toward lawbreakers is a ethical complication, which is not related to the real expertise of medical

The insanity defense is a topic that is commonly argued about. It is a topic that is helpful to be informed about. While my research was limited since there are not many cases of the insanity defense , many individuals believe that this defense is only used to allow defendants to get less time in prison and get away with a crime. Although this has been true in some cases, my objective is to bring light into this topic because the insanity defense serves as an appropriate punishment for someone that is mentally ill, the public has a widely misconception of it, and it provides mental help for an “insane” defendant.

The issue of madness has been touched by many writers. In this paper I will focus on two important writings which deal directly with the mental illnesses. The first one is "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey first published in 1962. The second is "Hamlet" written by Shakespeare approximately in 1602. Ken Kesey worked nights in a mental institution in California and his novel has a lot of truth in it. He faced patient's insanity every day and was confident that it was natural response to the overall madness of the corporate America. Shakespeare on the contrary, focused on the completely opposite side of the mental madness: through "Hamlet" he wanted to show that in degree of publicity mental disorders can harm observers.

Sanity and insanity are two deeply intertwined concepts. Any observation made upon the nature of either conversely reshapes our understanding of the other. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, there is a power struggle in a psychiatric ward between two conflicting definitions of sanity and insanity and what behaviour can be categorized as such. Miss Ratched’s sanity is achieved through a rigid hierarchal network of rules that enforces uniformity and order while the patients’ revolutionary sanity achieved solely through rebelling from the rules that limit the individual’s freedom and sense of self. In detailing the tension between two opposite views on sanity, Kesey scrutinizes the way society forms its perceptions towards sanity and exposes the flaws in its narrow definition of sanity. The process of defining sanity is formed by rules that act as the model of sanity which is inherently unjust to non-conforming

Since the beginning of Anglo-American law, the proposition that some criminal defendants should not be found guilty of their crimes by reason of mental instability has been a well established judicial action throughout centuries of jurisdiction. Even though the original intent of this practice was to soften the harsh consequences of capital punishments, the psychiatric state of persons convicted of crimes quickly became an important mechanism of social regulation. The justification for this mechanism lies in the assumption that the criminally insane are irrational and therefore non-responsible of their crimes. As we examine the history and implications of the insanity plea, a few questions should be kept in mind---1. How can we be sure

The defense allows those who are mentally unstable to be disciplined or treated in an apposite manner. Critics of the insanity defense may find the acquittal of mentally unstable persons inimical to American society and safety. However, the insanity plea attempts to proportion the person’s actions and a punishment by taking into consideration his or her mental status. If the crime was committed without intent, but instead through the fault of such person’s mental status, then the plea should continue to remain as a safe haven for victims of mental

On Being Sane in Insane Places is an essay written by David L. Rosenhan regarding experiments in which he and a team of others participated. These experiments were conducted in psychiatric wards of hospitals throughout the United States of America. In the experiments, a member of Rosenhan’s team would ask to be admitted on the grounds that they were hearing unfamiliar voices of the participant’s sex saying “’empty,’ ‘hollow,’ and ‘thud.’” (Rosenhan, 1973). All were easily admitted with the diagnosis of schizophrenia save for one, who was seeking admission to a private hospital, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a more desirable diagnosis. The team would then give only a falsified name and career; the truth about their pasts and relationships

Society frequently puts protections in place for those that are seen as vulnerable. These protections tend to cover those who are unable to defend themselves or fully understand what is happening around them. One of these protections is the ability to use a mental illness, defect or disability as a legal defense referred to as an Insanity Defense. The introduction of this practice came in 1844, when the defense for Daniel M’Naghten of Glasgow, Scotland was able to get him a Not Guilty verdict in a murder case. The case asserted that because of Daniel M’Naghtens altered mental state, where he experienced extreme paranoia and delusions; he was unable to make a conscious decision to do wrong or right according to the law. (Schmalleger, 128)