Randle McMurphy, a boisterous man with much self confidence and a humorous personality, otherwise known as the wise-guy hero, tries to reform the institution by rebelling against authority. While he tries to rebel against authority, his humorous personality also enlightens the patients and the ward in general. However, Nurse Ratched is not comfortable with this at all because she feels that McMurphy is a manipulator. Her controlling personality tends to clash with his easy going personality. As Nurse Ratched tries to enforce the rules, McMurphy is ready to rebel against them.
Nurse Ratched and the mental hospital in general are representative of rigidity and conventionalism. Chief Bromden, despite his drug induced hallucinations and delusions, sees that the ‘combine,’ which is conformist society, has rejected those in the hospital. Rather than the patients being insane, they are social misfits, put into a facility designed to make them institutionalised men. A strict set of guidelines imposed on patients, the ‘ward policy,’ is used to keep patients doing menial, repetitive work, and not allowing for freedom of expression, seen when the nurse states severely, “You must have a majority to change the ward policy. I’m afraid the vote is closed.” The institution of the mental hospital does not allow for emotional or mental development in the hopes of conditioning them to be unobtrusive in conventional society.
‘Back in 1971 …… Mental health referred only to mental illnesses and mental illnesses were shrouded in such shame and stigma that many people neglected the issue.’ Though much has changed today, the serious stigma and discrimination attached to mental illnesses are still among the most tragic realities facing people with mental illness all over the world. They result in stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger and avoidance behaviors. They force people to remain quiet about their mental illnesses, often causing them to delay treatment because of concerns about what their families, friends, children, co-workers and employers will think. In view of the prejudice and discrimination, there is a need to change in order to help them to have a complete and satisfying life. Stigma is the product of superstition, old belief systems, lack of knowledge and empathy, and the sustained distortion by the media.
Cara Kildall Period 5 10/17/08 LOTF Final Dictatorship is a slightly barbaric form of government that mistreats its citizens, and is ineffective. People’s mental welfare is in danger, because of the stress and trepidation of trying to live through another day. Also, they live in apprehension of being hurt or, in the case of Lord of the Flies, going crazy. Lawlessness is unhealthy for children and adults, and so a solid government is essential for happiness. Under dictatorship, many citizens feel incredible fear and deep unhappiness.
Unit 2 – P2 Disabilities can be seen in health and social care when the workers are bullying and abusing the patients just because they don’t quite understand what they are saying of if they get confused, this isn’t acceptable as it isn’t their fault they have a problem which they are born with. The health and social workers must learn to accept this and help them be as comfortable in this environment as possible. Ageism can be apparent in the health and social care environment and this can cause infringement of rights as the elderly people might not know what they are entitled to and this may cause confusion and sadness if they are getting victimized for being elderly. Social class may cause prejudice in the health and social care setting as they may have better things than the workers which may cause jealously and not giving them the correct level of care which they may have paid for or been promised, this can happen because the workers may feel belittled although the patient shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences. Gender infringement of rights Sexuality and culture differences in the health and social care setting could lead to stereotyping which would cause the patient to feel worthless and diminished just because of their choices in life which isn’t acceptable as the health and social care workers should be open minded and not judge people based on their choices and if they do they shouldn’t be working with people of all backgrounds.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, by Ken Kesey, one is constantly forced to question the meanings of simple words that are used every day. Should someone on a mental ward automatically be considered insane? Does the fact that a person holds a position of power make them the healthy one? Throughout the entire novel, one wonders who is really sick and who is not. In most cases, it is not what it would initially seem.
Perhaps Rosenhan was being too hard on psychiatric hospitals, especially when it is important for them to play safe in their diagnosis of abnormality because there is always an outcry when a patient is let out of psychiatric care and gets into trouble. If you were to go to the doctors complaining of stomach aches how would you expect to be treated? Doctors and psychiatrists are more likely to make a type two error (that is, more likely to call a healthy person sick) than a type one error (that is, diagnosing a sick person as healthy) When Rosenhan did his study the psychiatric classification in use was DSM-II. However, since then a new classification has been introduced which was to address itself largely to the whole problem of unreliability - especially unclear criteria. It is argued that
The movie, A Beautiful Mind, is based on the life of Nobel Prize winning economist, John Forbes Nash, Jr. The movie portrays the symptoms and treatment for paranoid schizophrenia from which John Nash suffers. He has episodes of auditory and visual hallucinations and has frequent interactions with imaginary people. He was treated for hallucinations with medication that had caused him to have some negative reactions to the medicine. So, he avoids taking the medication and thereby relapses into his earlier condition.
McMurphy is both a Byronic and messianic hero and reminds the patients of the ward how to stand up to the rules of society and to think for themselves. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is centered upon the role of the individual in society and the way it attempts to install order. Sometimes the means in which society imposes order compromises the individual’s freedom. The asylum houses patients who have problems functioning within the social norms of society. Randle McMurphy is a convict, accused of statutory rape charges, who feigns mental illness in order to be relieved of his work detail.
Leading on from the previous point, Lee also conveys that the fact that the community is so succinct can lead to suspicions and creation of rumours among people if you don’t abide by the unspoken rules that they live by. This is portrayed when Scout, in a narrative paragraph, says “in the house lived a malevolent phantom,”. The unnerving presence of the Radley’s seem to affect everyone. This is accentuated when Calpurnia, uncharacteristically, speaks about Mr Radley by murmuring “There goes the meanest man that God ever blew breath into”; this is surprising because “Calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people” and shows that everyone is silently judging the Radley’s for not being social. This is again shown in the descriptions of the Radley house.