Historian Troy Rondinone traces how 1970s horror films reflected and shaped public views of deinstitutionalization. As state hospitals closed, movies like The Exorcist, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Halloween turned psychiatric care into a symbol of helplessness, cruelty, or danger.
Between the 1950s and 1970s, state mental hospitals closed as new medications emerged, budgets shrank, and public concern grew about involuntary commitment and abuse. But promised community care never arrived, leaving many people without support. Films both captured that failure and hardened stereotypes, like the escaped psychiatric patient as a killer, that still echo in how the public imagines mental illness today.
✦ Movies didn't just show our fears about mental health care; they helped write them.