One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel by Ken Kesey, is narrated by a man named “Chief” Bromden, a schizophrenic patient in a mental ward. He pretends to be deaf and dumb, so that the doctors and other patients in the ward will ignore him. When the story begins, a new patient, McMurphy, is admitted to the hospital. He instantly causes trouble in the hospital by rebelling, and encouraging the other men to do the same. Nurse Ratched, the head of the hospital, is cruel and mean to the patients, and abuses her position of power because she knows many of the men are in a weak mental state and are unaware of their surroundings. This novel is very eye – opening because although it is a fictional story, it describes what patients in mental wards had to go through and how they were treated. Using articles and sources from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the internet, this essay will further describe these issues and show the reader how mental health patients were treated by their doctors in the past. 

The way that the men were treated throughout the novel is, in my opinion, appalling. However, according to many articles from that time period, abusive and neglectful treatment towards mental patients was not uncommon. Since they were seen as a “nuisance” at the time, the public’s main opinion towards them was that they should be locked away and taken out of the public eye. They were also seen as a threat to society, therefore people did not want those with mental health issues to just be wandering around on the streets. When describing a day in the mental ward, Chief Bromden says, “They don't bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb. Everybody thinks so. I'm cagey enough to fool them that much. If my being half Indian ever helped me in any way in this dirty life, it helped me being cagey, helped me all these years.” (Kesey). When Chief Bromden says this, he is referring to the fact that since everyone thinks that he is crazy, they are allowed to blatantly disrespect him because he won’t notice or understand. Another patient in the ward stated to Chief Bromden, “I’m committed…I’d of left here before now if it was up to me. Maybe I couldn’t play first string, with this bum arm, but I could of folded towels, couldn’t I? I could of done something. That nurse on my ward, she keeps telling the doctor I ain’t ready. Not even to fold towels in the crummy old locker room, I ain’t ready.” (Kesey). This further proves the fact that no one, not even the trained nurses of the ward, believed that anyone with mental health issues could accomplish anything. Nurse Ratched consistently talked down to the patients because she knew that she was in a position of authority. When talking to the men, she would state “"You men are in this hospital," she would say like she was repeating it for the hundredth time, "because of your proven inability to adjust to society.” (Kesey). Many patients were never released from the mental hospitals that they lived in, due to the fact that they were, at the time, seen as a danger or nuisance to society. People were often afraid of those with mental health issues, and in their opinion, keeping them in mental health institutions was the best option. 

In article written by Allsion M. Foerschner called The History of Mental Illness: From Skull Drills to Happy Pills, she describes the development of mental asylums in history. She stated that, “The majority of asylums were staffed by gravely untrained, unqualified individuals who treated mentally ill patients like animals” and that “iron cuffs and collars permitted just enough movement to allow patients to feed themselves but not enough to lie down at night, so they were forced to sleep upright.” (M. Foerschner). Although these reports were given before the time period that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was set in, not much had improved regarding the conditions of these mental hospitals. At this time, people with mental health issues were treated more like prisoners, rather than patients, because it was not believed that they could be cured. Mental hospitals in the past were often used as places for the mentally ill to sit until they passed away, and many families also abandoned patients after dropping them off there. It is stated that mental health institutions remained in these conditions and were staffed by untrained people throughout the 1500’s to the 1800’s, and to the early 1900’s in some places.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was set in a time period around the 1950s or 1960s. This time period was especially significant because it was during the Vietnam War. As people left the army, many of them were sent to mental asylums due to post traumatic stress disorders or other mental health issues. This caused a high influx of crowding and overpopulation in these hospitals. This caused patients to be neglected and not get the care that they truly needed. In fact, according to pbs.org, “The numbers of hospitalized mentally ill people in Europe and America peaks [in the early 1950s]. In England and Wales, there were 7,000 patients in 1850, 120,000 in 1930, and nearly 150,000 in 1954. In the United States, the number peaks at 560,000 in 1955.” (pbs.org). Not soon after this influx, many patients were deinstitutionalized, meaning that they were given anti – psychotic medication so that they could live more successfully and independently. Unfortunately, according to the PBS article, “many people suffering from mental illness become homeless because of inadequate housing and follow-up care.” However, the fear of being homeless and alone did not face Chief Bromden. The Chief finally realized that the asylum did not serve as a safe place anymore after Nurse Ratched lobotomized McMurphy, and chose to escape. He narrated, “I ran across the grounds in the direction I remembered seeing the dog go, toward the highway. I remember I was taking huge strides as I ran, seeming to step and float a long ways before my next foot struck the earth. I felt like I was flying. Free. Nobody bothers coming after an AWOL, I knew, and Scanlon could handle any questions about the dead man—no need to be running like this. But I didn't stop. I ran for miles before I stopped and walked up the embankment onto the highway.” This further proved the fact that mental health institutions at this time were similar to being in a prison, and that all the patients wanted to do was escape and be free to live a normal life.

Overall, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest further addresses the issues that mental health asylums had in the past, by giving a story that is from the point of view of a man in a mental ward. Although Kesey did write a fictional story, after further research a reader can see that the conditions he mentioned were not so far off from the conditions of a ward in real life.
