Cuckoo’s Nest

JOHN David Deaton was a normal 17-year-old when he walked into a National Medical Enterprises (NME) psychiatric hospital in Dallas. A physician had persuaded him to go there for help with depression after his girlfriend jilted him. Deaton did not know that the physician was on the hospital’s payroll, and that his pay depended on how well he did at filling the hospital’s beds.

A doctor who did not see Deaton until months later ordered him admitted to the hospital. After four days, when Deaton sought to leave, he was tied down with leather restraints. He was diagnosed as having “borderline personality disorder,” a catchall label psychiatrists can pin on a lot of people who don’t fit more specific diagnostic categories. And after Deaton thought out loud about killing himself or the nurse who first had him tied down, the shrinks added “homicidal and suicidal ideation” for good measure. In fact, however, the most abnormal thing about John Deaton was that his father’s employer provided extraordinarily rich insurance coverage for mental illness.

EH

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Eugene H. Methvin

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JOHN David Deaton was a normal 17-year-old when he walked into a National Medical Enterprises (NME) psychiatric hospital in Dallas. A physician had persuaded him to go there for help with depression after his girlfriend jilted him. Deaton did not know that the physician was on the hospital’s payroll, and that his pay depended on how well he did at filling the hospital’s beds.

A doctor who did not see Deaton until months later ordered him admitted to the hospital. After four days, when Deaton sought to leave, he was tied down with leather restraints. He was diagnosed as having “borderline personality disorder,” a catchall label psychiatrists can pin on a lot of people who don’t fit more specific diagnostic categories. And after Deaton thought out loud about killing himself or the nurse who first had him tied down, the shrinks added “homicidal and suicidal ideation” for good measure. In fact, however, the most abnormal thing about John Deaton was that his father’s employer provided extraordinarily rich insurance coverage for mental illness.