The story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest begins with writer Ken Kesey (1935 – 2001). While at Stanford University in 1959 Kesey volunteered to take part in a study on psychoactive drugs at the Veterans Administration hospital in Menlo Park, California which included taking drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. When those experiments ended he accepted a job as a night attendant in Menlo Park’s psychiatric unit. His experiences with drug induced hallucinations and working in a psych ward inspired him to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The book was published in 1962. It was adapted into a film in 1975. Directed by Milos Foreman, starring Jack Nicholson as Randle P. McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, the film was a critical success winning the Oscars for best actor, actress, director, picture, and adapted screenplay.
Because of the film’s widespread popularity it brought many issues about mental health into public awareness. It portrayed the mentally ill as people instead of vegetables. The mentally ill should not be stored away and forgotten and the movie recognized that. It also showed the harm that some doctors and professionals are capable of.
The impact of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on mental health wasn’t entirely positive. The film gives the impression that hospitals do more harm than good and that mental illness is a societal problem and not a biological/chemical one. But One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest brought a certain perspective on mental illness into public consciousness and remains a classic film and novel to this day.
Resources
Filmsite.org’s page (film version)
Article about the book and movie
Wikipedia article about the novel
Internet Movie Database entry for the film
