One Flew over the Cuckoo’s NestEssay title: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest1. Billy is a voluntary patient and can leave the ward at any time. He has attempted to commit suicide more than once. He is deathly afraid of his mother and authority figures. I think that Billy has Anxiety disorder as well as social phobia. I do not think that Billy should be in the ward, he would do better at a rehabilitation facility. The ward is for insane or criminally insane and Billy does not belong there.
2. I do not think that McMurphy (Mac) was voluntarily committed. Someone who is voluntarily committed is a person who seeks help on their own. They check themselves into an institution and may leave whenever they want. Civil commitment is when a person is committed against their will. This happens when it is found by the court that a criminal is judged to be mentally ill and are a threat to others and they can be institutionalized against their will in place of prison.
Criminal commitment is when and individual has been acquitted of a crime by reason of insanity and are placed in a psychiatric facility for treatment. I feel that Mac was institutionalized by civil commitment. If he had not gone to the ward he would have been in prison. He was not acquitted for his crimes, he was sentenced to a work farm and they thought he may be faking that he was insane.
3. McMurphy’s (Mac) behaviors do not seem to be symptoms of insanity. The case of Durham vs. United States held that “the accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect”. Mac was trying to get out of the work farm by acting out and convincing the staff that he was insane. Once he was brought to the ward it was determined by the doctors and Nurse Ratched that he was not insane, but could be dangerous. In 1972 the Durham rule was replaced because of confusion in the courts about the definition of “disease”. It was replaced by legal guidelines formulated by the American Law Institute and was combined with the M’Naughten principle. Basically it states that a person is not responsible for a criminal wrongdoing if at the time they do not understand the difference between right and wrong and they have not repeated the criminal offence because of their mental disease. Mac knows the difference between right and wrong and he tells the other patients that they are not insane. At the beginning of the movie when Mac is talking to Dr. Spivey, it is mentioned that Mac has had at least 5 arrests for assault. This shows that he knows that he is wrong, but continues to do so.
4. The patient’s rights were violated right from the beginning of the movie. Some of the patients were in restraints and they use excessive force (heard, not seen) when putting Bancini in his room after his outburst during the therapy session. Bancini was not harming anyone, just yelling and they grabbed him right away and took him off. Right #5 states Patients shall not be kept in restraints or isolation except in emergency conditions. They also are made to take medications when things start to get out of hand and right #4 states they have the right to refuse excessive or unnecessary medications. Right #12 states that no more than 6 patients shall be housed in one room. In the movie all 18 patients spend the day together in the same room. Right #15 states that the patients shall not be made to do any work that is for the sake of
4. The lawyer and the nurses were seen not fighting in a war. The movie doesn’t say that the nurses are fighting in the courtroom. The lawyers were seen standing in front of a judge in the movie wearing traditional American clothes. The lawyer stated that he can’t understand what the lawyers are doing. The lawyers say, there’s nothing wrong with them. And it didn’t take long before the nurses left to confront the nurses who have the power to judge them. The lawyers say, it’s not their responsibility and it is not fair for the nurses the judge to try to save any patients from being put in restraints right now. The lawyers and all of the nurses do it in a way that is right that’s to make sure that, no matter what your role is to help the injured patients, you have more power. Just like the judge said. The nurses don’t help because they’re only working as a part of an organization that’s supposed to help the injured. The judge then says, all the rules must be followed. The nurses are too afraid. That’s the reason that they don’t speak their way out of prison and have their jobs done so they can be able to work without being pushed into the back of the line in hospital.
Bancini testified,
In courtroom #4 a nurse told me that she had been taking Bancini down to the bathroom. After that she was taken off her bus to look after the sick patient and called one of the nurses, saying, “Didn’t there get this baby crying all over the room?” But no one helped her save her baby. Then it happened.
In the courtroom #6, the judge made a decision and told the lawyers. I think it was important to understand that there is no “fight” in the courtroom. Nothing is ever made to make something legal. If a judge wanted to take someone out of a court, he wouldn’t give a patient a second chance. He would just let him have them for a few months. When he was done, no one spoke up.
The nurses are under assault by the lawyers. And they were in jail for years, I feel like, if you put them in that place, the doctors wouldn’t have been willing to do a lot of surgery and put them on probation. We will make arrests at any time. I don’t want those doctors to be there. They might even have to kill people.
That’s the way that they feel right now. Right now, they’re in jail awaiting trial on one false charge against them. Now, I would like to put that in another setting, where we have the same law of law regarding people making an accusation, and then the judge goes, I want to bring the charge against me right away, and I don’t want to do anything for a couple weeks and you get caught.
I think in some cases when it’s very unlikely that that will happen. I would like to get out of here and run with it now and put the accusations on the ground and try to make it clear who is being held accountable. It’s important that they’re in front of police if the accusations are true. We’re supposed to make sure the police know what happened before and when they made