The dementia problem that won't go away
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
In Ken Kesey’s 1959 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the authorities in the mental institution exert ruthless control over every aspect of the inmates’ behaviour as a way of maintaining order and dealing with ‘difficult’ patients. In the case of the novel’s central character, Randle P McMurphy (who actually faked mental illness to avoid a prison sentence), the measures used include electroconvulsive therapy and frontal lobotomy.