Stigma in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Essay

During the 1700’s the jails were not only used to confine criminals, but they confined people with mental illness as well. People with mental illness were subjected to inhumane treatment, even when the individual was admitted

Institutional care was condemned, as in many cases patients’ mental conditions deteriorated, and institutions were not able to treat the individual in a holistic manner. In many state institutions, patients numerously outnumbered the poorly trained staff. Many patients were boarded in these facilities for extensive periods of time without receiving any services. By 1963, the average stay for an individual with a diagnosis of schizophrenia was eleven years. As the media and newspapers publicized the inhumane conditions that existed in many psychiatric hospitals, awareness grew and there was much public pressure to create improved treatment options (Young Minds Advocacy, 2016). .

Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.

In 1973, psychologist David Rosenhan published “On Being Sane in Insane Places” which documents the results of studies he and his confederates conducted at 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the United States. The studies were an examination into the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis methods. Rosenhan’s research focused on testing the hypothesis of whether or not psychiatrists and medical staff can distinguish the sane from the insane and if the characteristics that lead to diagnoses relate more to the patient or to the environment and context in which they’re being assessed. (Rosenhan, 1973) The study was divided into two main parts. Participant observations and comparative information studies were noted as well as they gave valuable insight into the treatment of psychiatric patients, conditions in psychiatric hospitals, and the effect that diagnostic labels had on how patients were perceived by staff. Ultimately, the study discovered that psychiatrists could not reliably distinguish the sane from the insane and insight was gained into how diagnostic labels and environmental context play a strong role in the perception of behavior.

Question: Write a social sciences essay based on a documentary or film. Explore how deviance and/or crime are presented in this text and relate your findings to the various sociological perspectives and theories studied in class.

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

During the 1800s, treating individuals with psychological issues was a problematic and disturbing issue. Society didn’t understand mental illness very well, so the mentally ill individuals were sent to asylums primarily to get them off the streets. Patients in asylums were usually subjected to conditions that today we would consider horrific and inhumane due to the lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.

The legal definition of crime is “an act of violation of a criminal law for which a punishment is prescribed; the person committing it must have intended to do so and must have done so without legally acceptable defence or justification” (Walsh & Hemmens 2008:2). Alternatively, deviance is any social behaviour which departs from that regarded as ‘normal’ or socially acceptable within a society or social context (Jary & Jary 1991:160). The underlining focus of my essay is The Criminal Justice System in England and Wales which is a key public service consisting of various bodies and individuals including: the Police, Crown Prosecution Service, Her Majesty’s Court Service, National Offender Management Services (Probation and Prisons) and Youth Justice Board.

The mentally ill were cared for at home by their families until the state recognized that it was a problem that was not going to go away. In response, the state built asylums. These asylums were horrendous; people were chained in basements and treated with cruelty. Though it was the asylums that were to blame for the inhumane treatment of the patients, it was perceived that the mentally ill were untamed crazy beasts that needed to be isolated and dealt with accordingly. In the opinion of the average citizen, the mentally ill only had themselves to blame (Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, 1999). Unfortunately, that view has haunted society and left a lasting impression on the minds of Americans. In the era of "moral treatment", that view was repetitively attempted to be altered. Asylums became "mental hospitals" in hope of driving away the stigma yet nothing really changed. They still were built for the untreatable chronic patients and due to the extensive stay and seemingly failed treatments of many of the patients, the rest of the society believed that once you went away, you were gone for good. Then the era of "mental hygiene" began late in the nineteenth century. This combined new concepts of public health, scientific medicine, and social awareness. Yet despite these advancements, another change had to be made. The era was called "community mental health" and

What comes to mind when you hear the words “insane asylum”? Do such terms as lunatic, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? More than likely these are the terminology that most of us would use to describe our perception of insane asylums. However, those in history that had a heart’s desire to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different viewpoint. Insane asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate purpose in the reformation of insane asylums in the nineteenth century was to improve the treatment for the mentally ill by providing a humane and caring environment for them to reside.

The notion of labelling theory was first created in the 1960s and gained popularity towards the late 1960s and early 1970s. The term was first applied “mentally ill” in 1966 when Thomas Scheff published his article Being Mentally Ill. Labelling theory explains a great importance in respect to drug use. Although labelling theory does not fully explain why initial drug use occurs, it does detail the process by which many people find themselves as socially deviant from others (Glen R. Hanson, University of Utah Salt Lake City Utah Glen R Hanson, Peter J. Venturelli, Annette E. Fleckenstein). The term deviance is used in a manner to describe an absence of the patterns of behaviour expected in a society and not in a judgemental way. Labelling theory

Unfortunately, asylum founders could only guess at the causes of insanity. Patient after patient was admitted into the state hospitals, but the cause of their disturbance was often a mystery. Many were inflicted with various organic diseases, like dementia, Huntington’s disease, brain tumors, and many were in the third stage of syphilis. With no treatments available, providing humane care was all that could be done. In the years following the civil war American cities boomed and the asylum began struggling to keep up. Soldiers, freed slaves, and immigrants were stranded in a strange land. The asylum became organized more like a factory or small town. There were upper and lower classman, bosses and workers, patients with nothing, and patients with privileges. Sarah Burrows, a schizophrenic and daughter of a wealthy doctor had a ten bedroom house that was built for her on the hospital grounds. Burrows home was just a stone’s throw away from the hospital’s west wing, where over sixty black women slept side by side. (Asylum: A History of the Mental Institution in America). The hospital began to rely on the free labor the patients provided. However, isolating the hospital from the community meant there was no way of knowing what was happening inside the asylum. The asylum became a world apart. In the 1870’s, Elizabeth Packard, a former patient of St. Elizabeth’s, wrote about her mistreatment and abuse

During the mid-1800’s the mentally ill were either homeless or locked in a cell under deplorable conditions. Introduction of asylums was a way to get the mentally ill better care and better- living conditions. Over a period of years, the admissions grew, but staff to take care of their needs did not. Asylums became overcrowded and treatments that were thought to cure, were basically medieval and unethical

The originality of the term ‘prisoner or patient’ can date back to the early 19th century, when specialist institutional provision was introduced to care for people with a mental deficiency. Many people, who required treatment for such deficiencies, were primarily cared for by their families and the parish authorities; known as ‘Care in the Community’ (Bartlett and Wright, 1999:183-185). Anyone displaying behaviour deemed abnormal were declared ‘insane’, and if violent behaviour was exhibited they were confined to ‘Madhouses’ or placed in ‘Workhouses’. The introduction of the Lunacy Act in 1845 and 1890 was regarded, as a ground-breaking outcome in the treatment of the mentally ill (Eldergill, 1998:61). The Act helped reform the status

We feel that One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest is filled with many psychological connotations. This movie is set in a mental hospital where McMurphy was admitted to be psychologically evaluated because of violent behavior. Upon his arrival McMurphy noticed that the patients were very robot-like in their actions. The hospital is extremely structured where the patient’s daily life was monotonous. We will discuss the various connotations by answering the following questions that have been asked.