Home » One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Nickelodeon Criticized for Stigmatizing Stereotype

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You might remember that I created an award called the Stupidity Award for Promoting Prejudice a while back and gave the first to an NBC sports writer who didn’t see anything wrong with a high school dance team in Waunakee, Wisconsin wearing straight jackets with the word PSYCHO WARD printed on them as they performed in a state competition.   

I was tipped off to that school’s insensitive, stigma-promoting  performance by a fellow mental health blogger, Chrisa Hickey, who posts her thoughts at The Mindstorm: Raising a Mentally Ill Child.

Chrisa sent me an email about a new example of stigma in the media. From reading her note, it sounds as if another SAPP award is due.

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Baton Rouge Selects CRAZY To Read

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I have exciting news! The City of Baton Rouge has chosen, CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, as its One Book, One Community  selection this summer.

In 2006, Baton Rouge joined more than 400 American cities that participate in this national reading program. In a letter informing me that CRAZY had been chosen,  Abby Hannie, a member of the Baton Rouge’s program  steering committee, explained:

The One Book, One Community initiative was formed to promote a common city-wide reading experience to increase intellectual and cultural dialogue among readers and to exchange ideas for the purpose of raising awareness and visibility with regard to a particular community issue.

The idea is to get everyone in a city to read and discuss the same book. Two of the most popular selections chosen since the first program was launched in 1998 in Seattle have been  To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

That’s pretty heady company.

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The Cuckoo’s Nest Dr. Continues Speaking Out!

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Dr. Dean Brooks has spent his adult life advocating for persons with mental illnesses. And he has not slowed down even though he now is 94 years-old and is living in an assistant living facility not far from the Oregon State Hospital in Salem that he used to oversee.  

He first burst on the national stage when he appeared in the 1975  movie,  One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, as the hospital’s  chief psychiatrist, Dr. John Spivey, M.D.  It was a clever irony because Dr. Brooks was actually in charge of the hospital at the time of filming. In the movie, he can be seen interviewing Jack Nicholson to determine if he has an actual mental disorder or is faking it.

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