Health and aging are institutions that have always been and will continue to be highly relevant in the societal context because they are factors that determine the well-being of a population. The perception of health and aging may differ from one person to another depending on their circumstances, way of life, culture, and even education level. While some view good health and graceful ageing as merely by-products of financial wealth, others perceive them as rewards that an individual can gain through attention to oneself and the small steps made toward the end goal. What is often missed is that mental health could play a crucial role in the maintenance of a good life and the ability to age even though seeking psychological help is stigmatized.
In instances of neurodegenerative diseases that could deteriorate health with age, there remains significant misunderstanding regarding the mechanisms of care as shown in the Hollywood classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The movie is closely connected to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia that affect people as they age. It shows that the misunderstanding of the degenerative disease and negative stereotyping could make both mental and physical health worse overall. As the protagonist of the story, Randle Patrick McMurphy, walks the line between being clinically insane and faking his state to get out of prison, the movie deals with the relationships between patients, the power struggle between patients and nurses, and the frailties of those affected by mental illness (Jennings, 2011). What the film shows brilliantly is that treating patients with severe mental health conditions cannot occur through simply locking them away from society. When such a model of care is applied to patients with Alzheimer’s, for example, it perpetuates social isolation and inhumane practices that exacerbate the condition rather than lowering its impact.
Therefore, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an example of what not to do in modern healthcare, especially when it comes to older patients who experience a severe decline in their ability to live normally. While impairment occurs on scale, it could have significant individual ramification and severe financial implications. Besides, aging and poor health often coincide with increasing mental anguish that the family members of an elderly individual experience because they need to support their relative with them acting irrationally or aggressively. For patients with Alzheimer’s, the treatment is rarely seamless because the condition progresses steadily and causes irreversible mental and physical impairments. However, healthcare providers must act from the perspective of beneficence and non-maleficence and make treatment tolerable and sustainable, thus completely opposite to what is shown in the movie.
The main conflict in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the power struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, which can be seen as an allegory of the controversies that exist in contemporary healthcare. When caring for older individuals whose mental and physical state has deteriorated, it is crucial to find balance between ethically grounded therapy and evidence-based interventions that have proved to work. The outdated practices that stigmatize mental health issues must be abandoned in order to guarantee that people can age peacefully and with minimum suffering caused to them. The movie discussed in this paper is a perfect illustration of how healthcare institutions should not act, pointing out that only the attention to the unique needs of each person could alleviate the burden of illness and lead to long-term well-being.
Reference
Jennings, B. (2011). Institutional power: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In H. Colt, S. Quadrelli, & F. Lester (Eds.), The picture of health: Medical ethics and the movies (pp. 241-245). New York, NY: Oxford Academic.