One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Article 1 : Mental Health Reform: What It Would Really Take

By John Cloud/Los Angeles

Summary: The article is about the conditions of mentally ill people in America in 19999. It says that “most American with mental illness simply aren’t treated.” Untreated mental illness can “leave you jobless and sleeping under the Boston University Bridge” like Gerald Minsk, a mentally ill person suffering from bipolar disorder. For years his disorder was ignored, and when it was found out, the mental hospitals did not have the time, or the resource to treat him. Mental illness can have horrifying affects if not treated. For example, a person, who was supposed to be in an asylum, was ignored and one day “he shoved a woman from a subway platform to her death under the wheels of a train. The Article states that of the 2 million people suffering from schizophrenia, more than half of them receive substandard care. President Clinton announced to help employers providing equal insurance coverage for both physical as well as mental health. In the end, the article says, “Even if all the proposals become law, they will represent only the first steps in solving the crisis of the mentally ill.”

Response: In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest most of the patients are not treated the right way.  Miss Ratched only uses medicines with side effects, shock therapies, lobotomy, and activities that are “theoropathic”. And there is no evidence of the patients getting better.  Miss Ratched, sometimes, makes a patient go through a therapy just because he was not behaving well. . The Big Nurse got McMurphy lobotomized just because he broke the rules of the ward. This is not the correct way to treat patients and might just make the situation worse like the people suffering from mental illness in the article. And sometimes these people turn into Vegetables as these treatments sometimes fail. This is like wasting a life which is absolutely unfair. Chief Bromden does not need any medication or shock therapies, but just needs someone to listen to him and to boost his confidence. Miss Racthed was not able to do that in year but a commoner did it in a night. But these people do not get any kind of justice in the book and the “combine” keeps doing its job.

Vocabulary:

Word 1: Mafiosi

1. Gerald Minsk used to drop acid and smoke pot to help quell paranoid delusions that Boston's North End mafiosi were conspiring against him.

2. Mafiosi: A member of the Mafia of a mafia
Italian, from Italian dialect (Sicily) mafiusu gallant, swaggerer, perhaps alteration of marfusu scoundrel 
First Known Use: 1875

3. The theme of the taent show this year is spy. Some of us might have to dress up like mafiosis.

Word 2: incarcerated

1. Another 200,000 are incarcerated, usually as a result of petty crimes.

2. Incarcerated: to put in prison
Latin incarceratus, past participle of incarcerare, from in- + carcer prison
First Known Use: 1560

3. Some people who were caught high on drugs were incarcerated.

Word 3: prodded

1. Gore, who disclosed in the run-up to the conference that she was treated for depression in the early '90s, has prodded her husband's boss to ask Congress to spend more money to treat the mentally ill.

2. to urge someone on
1530s, "to poke with a stick," possibly a variant of brod, from M.E. brodden "to goad," from O.N. broddr "shaft, spike" or perhaps onomatopoeic. Figurative sense is recorded from 1871. The noun is recorded from 1802.

3. Mr Ruddock is a bad teacher, therefore, I will try to Prod Mr. Anderson to change the global issues teacher fast.