Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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Death is a major component of the story One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 34,598 deaths in 2007 (Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention). There is a link between suicide and mental health disorders. In the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, both characters Charles Cheswick and Billy Bibbit commit suicide. Studies show that both Cheswick and Bibbit displayed common characteristics found in of psychiatric patients that committed suicide. What is interesting is nurse Ratched also fits thdescription of characteristics found in suicidal patients in a psychiatric hospital. Nurse Ratched forced her methods upon the patients, resulting in the perfect formula for suicide.
According to a study conducted by The Lancet, “Around a quarter of people who commit suicide have been in contact with mental health services in the year before death. This accounts for around 1000 cases annually, and of these cases 16 percent are psychiatric inpatients. Of these, 23 percent occurred in the first week after admission” (Hiroeh). These numbers are staggering, clearly showing a correlation between not only suicide and mental health problems, but also suicide and psychiatric patients. The reason that such a high percentage of suicides come from psychiatric inpatients is because these patients feel hopeless and trapped. In the case of Charles Cheswick, he conformed to Nurse Ratched’s methods before McMurphy came around, as did everybody else. McMurphy had a lot of influence on the other patients because he was rebellious. Cheswick decided to speak up against nurse Ratched and she lashed back by giving him shock therapy, which was very painful. After this punishmen...

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...resting is the fact that nurse Ratched also fit the characteristics of psychiatric patients that have committed suicide. This books ending would have been very different if nurse Ratched would have lost control of the hospital, essentially losing her sanity.

Works Cited

Hiroeh, Urara, Louis Appleby, Preben Mortensen, and Graham Dunn. "Death by Homicide, Suicide, and Other Unnatural Causes in People." The Lancet 358.9299 (n.d.): 2110-112. Web.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, a Novel. New York: Viking, 1962. Print.
"Multivariate Analysis." WordNet Search - 3.1. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Patsiokas, Anne, George Clum, and Richard Luscomb. "Cognitive Characteristics of Suicide
Attempters." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (1979): 478-84. Web.
"Suicide in the U.S.: Statistics and Prevention." NIMH RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.

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