The concept of mental health is something that has evolved rapidly over the years. It went from something that made a person “crazy” and caused them to be locked up and treated extremely poorly, to something that is much more recognized as an illness. Ken Keysey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest demonstrates examples of the treatment not only mental health patients would receive, but also the treatment of minorities at the time. The attitude and beliefs of how both Native Americans and mental health patients should be treated in the 1950s and 1960s is shown in Ken Keysey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest through the protagonist, Bromden, and his oppression in the insane asylum. 

During the 1950s and the 1960s, citizens in mental health institutions were treated with disrespect, and treated as subhuman. They were locked away in mental institutions, where they were stripped of their basic human rights and treated like animals. In addition to the oppression of mental health patients, Native Americans were also often times locked up in mental institutions, being described as “physically superhuman and emotionally and cognitively incapacitated” (Wilson 189). The fact that Bromden is a Native American helped to get him locked up in the insane asylum, due to the belief that this would make him less able to function in the real world. This connects with a time when the government was removing Native Americans from their lands, attempting to move them into big cities. This was an incredible change for the Native Americans. Not only in the style of leaving from rural to an urban lifestyle; but also in the daily customs and rituals of their lives. They had to leave their tribes and take on the rights and responsibilities of an American citizen. They were expected to understand and adapt to the American ideals with very little knowledge of the ideals. Their customs and traditions were expected to be put aside, in favor of the “traditional” American life. Those who returned to their tribe faced many problems, along with a loss of pride and culture. 

In Ken Keysey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, the protagonist of the story, Bromden, can be argued to embody the counterculture of the time. The Native Americans were being oppressed, and often times tried to fight for their rights, just like the young people or “hippies” of the time. “The rise of sixties counterculture witnessed an upsurge in interest in Native American culture and traditions, and indigenous customs were frequently figured as a deeper spiritual connection to the environment and a greater sense of personal wholeness” (Wilson 189). The counterculture of the time was about thinking differently, and being an individual fighting for ones ideals, and while Bromden might not truly fight for his rights until the end of the story when he breaks free, the idea of his different thinking is what lands him in the mental hospital in the first place.  “From a countercultural perspective, Bromden’s schizophrenia is already closely related to his social status as a dispossessed indigene. As a Native American, Bromden already thinks differently from the machine culture he inhabits” (Wilson 194).  Bromden thinks differently, which in the culture of the time leaves society to believe that he does not fit in, is not able to function in the world, and therefore needs to be locked up in an insane asylum. In many ways, Bromden’s sickness can be viewed as an escape from the real world, since he thinks differently than just the “status quo”. When he breaks out of the ward and back into the real world, this can be seen as a breakthrough of counterculture, oppressing what he is told to do, which is stay in the ward and follow what the nurses say. By breaking out and returning to the world to do as he pleases, he symbolizes the ideas of counterculture of the time, going against what he is told to do.

Bromden also embodies the oppression and racism towards Native Americans at the time. He is constantly called “Chief”, a racial slur that directly relates to the name that they would call Native American leaders. These leaders lost their land and their power due to westward expansion and industrialization. In this case, however, Bromden is not fighting for control over land, instead fighting for control over his mind. Bromden attempts to fight his Schizophrenia, slowly returning back to his natural state of thinking without the sickness. While doing that, he is beginning to fight the oppression he faced every day in the combine, eventually breaking free. At the beginning of the novel, “Bromden’s opening line, “They’re out there,” communicates both disability and Native American Counterculture the schizophrenic paranoia that sets him apart from normative society and the very real threat of the racism and dispossession that he has faced all his life” (Wilson 193). Bromden is both oppressed in his mind by his schizophrenia, and in the world by the relations Native Americans had towards the government and the way citizens acted towards them. 

Bromden is not only oppressed in the ward, but often times he is also deprived of his manhood. In the ward, Nurse Ratched does everything in her power to belittle the men who are in the ward, thinking that using this tactic will allow them to be more obedient. Nurse Ratched believes that if she takes away their manliness and ability to think on their own, the men will blindly follow in everything she says, obedient and docile. Wexler, in his analysis of “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” says that Nurse Ratched and her social order make it near impossible for Bromden to have any power in the ward, considering that he is both a minority and in the mental hospital, making her believe that he has to either conform or he would never be getting out (Waxler 230). Nurse Ratched uses this technique of both intimidation and emasculation to keep order in her institution. She believes the only way these men can be “normal” is to conform to the outside world, and she attempts to make them conform as much as she can. She believes that everyone should be a robot in his or her own world, following and listening blindly to what people of authority have to say. 

Bromden also deceives everyone in the ward, allowing everyone to believe that he is deaf and mute. They believe this, claiming since he is Native American, he is so dumb that he cannot even hear or speak. Bromden, however, is not deaf or mute. He uses this to his advantage to find out secrets, and infiltrate the ward more than he would be able to before. Since everyone was deceived by his lies, they talked in front of him thinking that he could not hear, which was obviously not true. He uses this tactic to attempt to fight the oppression he is being faced with. He uses the fact that people believe that he is deaf and mute, due to his minority status, to his advantage.

Bromden is a both a minority, and has schizophrenia. Because of both of these things, people believe that somehow that makes him less of a person, and subhuman in their eyes. The mental institutions of the time were the epitome of people being treated poorly. Often times patients were just dropped there and forgotten, left to deal with the poor standards of the institutions of the time. This also connects to the counterculture of the era, and Bromden in many ways can encompass the ideas the young teens or the hippies of the time had about their culture and assimilation.  This story confirms what we know about the historical era, and can still contain relevant information for today. Although the treatment of mental health patients has progressed a long way from how it was when the book was written, it is not perfect or ideal. Not only is the treatment of patients not ideal yet, but the idea of minority treatment is still a big issue. Racism and mistreatment is still something very prevalent today, and also needs to be changed or fixed, which can only happen with the help and unification of the country in fixing these issues.
