Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia, manipulation and the human battle against literally mind-numbing conformity are all elements in the stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's powerful novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) escapes work on a prison farm by feigning mental illness, but he finds himself in a far more coercive institution than the one he left behind. A wisecracking, rebellious patient and prisoner, 38 years old, is escorted into the ward where he meets some of the bizarre, most memorable patients and inmates. The other men, both sane and insane, are just like him: they hide in the locked ward from the law, their families, or the despair of their own lives. Its allegorical theme is set in the world of an authentic mental hospital at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon in the 1970’s.

The life is dull and repetitive. The inmates are so used to its repetitiveness that they have tuned the exciting part of life out completely. Everyone on the ward seems to mutually fear Nurse Ratched, who instigates very strict policies. McMuprhy, who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, knows right away that something is wrong and doesn’t like the way they are treated. He sees the inmates not caring that they are

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He finds that he is not free to go until Nurse Ratched decides he is ready for the world. There has always been theories about the causes, but now as the knowledgeaccumulates the theories will become fewer and fewer. First of all I want to tell you about some well-intended therapies of this century that were carried out with little scientific bases and unhappy results. Snyder has called it "barbaric" and "diabolical" (Anderson 20). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is another example of a widely used therapy with little evidence of it's usefullness. But because it has been misunderstood for so long, it has received relatively little attention and its victims have been undeservingly stigmatized.

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought (as in hallucinations and delusions), and conduct. When given too much insulin the supply of sugar to the brain decreases to the point where coma occurs. basically screw up the works indefinately. Ken Kesey, the author of this novel and movie, was influenced highly in writing this piece. Everything is falling out of place and McMurphy reached his peak where he had no control and the ward put him under shock therapy. He decides to breathe some fun into their existance on several occasions. The unbreakable hold she had on the inmates is fading away, she is losing her respect slowly. Instead of helping the schizophrenic, though, it just took what shreds of personality they had left and left them like zombies.

Approximate Word count = 1429
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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