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Shock Therapy In The Film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's N

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According to the ADAA, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, in 2015, 16.1 million adults in the United States have experienced depression at one point of their life. A well-known electrical procedure called Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy (ECT) was used back in the 1930’s and 1940’s and still currently used today to treat depression and other mental illnesses to trigger a brief seizure. It was to believe to result to reversing symptoms of certain mental illnesses and can be an option for mentally ill patients when medications are not effective. However, ECT was often represented as an abusive form of control towards mentally ill patients in movies and TV shows when their behavior is unmanageable. In the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched uses ECT to …show more content…

After some time, McMurphy realizes how Nurse Ratched is in control of the patients and if any patients get out of hand or questions something, Nurse Ratched immediately shut the patients down. In one scene, Nurse Ratched sends McMurphy and two other patients to be given the ECT treatment when McMurphy and some other patients sneaked out for a fishing trip. McMurphy is trying to get the patients who voluntary are in the institution to experience how wonderful life is and not to fear the “real world.” The institution has kept McMurphy in the mental institution to keep a close eye on what mental conditions he may have for being sent there. Therefore, McMurphy has not been officially diagnosed as mentally unstable and yet he was given the ECT treatment. As a result, Nurse Ratched had to resort to ECT to gain back control over her patients by using ECT as punishment for the patients’

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