One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Words: 757
Pages: 4

The word mental hospital usually makes people think of crazy, unstable, or deranged people. People see things no one else does. People who can’t differentiate reality from their imagination. Even though none of these are true, but actually quite harmful stereotypes, many people don’t know any better, this being both due to a lack of education on the topic, but also a lack of research. Ken Kesey, the author of the 1962 classic novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, spent quite some time with Veterans in mental hospitals, opening many people’s eyes towards the conditions the patients of these facilities live under, all through his novels. Though conditions in mental hospitals have improved significantly, there's still a gap of transparency, regulation …show more content…
While some studies have found that without mental hospitals there is no help for those in need of 24-hour surveillance or professional care, mental hospitals are not regulated enough, leaving far too much space for abuse or neglect or simply not getting the right care. This inevitably leads to an alarming amount of patients leaving these facilities in worse shape than they came in, indicating that mental hospitals are more harmful than helpful for their patients. While there has not been much research done on the authentic lives lived in especially long term mental hospitals, Nourredine Jina-Pettersen dedicated years to the research to give more insight into the conditions these patients live under A recurrent theme in Pettersen's research was either that the patients were given “insufficient or abusive care. While several examples [of abuse or neglect] were mentioned, many agreed that the practices they were subjected to were potentially illegal or required “significant change”. The research also mentioned patients who were refused their clothes, and not for safety reasons, but because the nurses on shift forgot to give the patients their clothes after