The Folklore of Deinstitutionalization: Popular Film and the Death of the Asylum, 1973–1979

The demise of America's state mental hospital system, or “deinstitutionalization,” has received much attention from sociologists and historians of medicine. Less understood is the manner in which the public experienced and came to terms with it. Using elements of folklore and horror studies, I will examine how popular films accommodated audiences to institutional decline and confirmed popular antistatist pessimism. The Exorcist (1973), One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Halloween (1978), and When a Stranger Calls (1979) helped weave a tapestry of distrust. By endorsing popular conceptions of institutional failure and presenting mythical narratives of individualist triumph, these films helped pave a path towards the conservative Reagan era to come.

Forensic Mental Health Services and Competence to Stand Trial

This chapter traces the author’s entry into the field of psychology and law in the late 1960s and 1970s. His interests began when he was an undergraduate working in a state mental hospital during the early years of the deinstitutionalization movement, followed by his involvement in creating a pretrial diversion program while he was a graduate student. The chapter then turns to the author’s seminal studies of competence to stand trial and reviews the advances in the field that have led to more structured, reliable, and valid assessments of competence as well as community-based alternatives for assessment and treatment. The chapter concludes with an assessment of progress and ongoing challenges.