Moral Panics, Mental Illness Stigma, and the Deinstitutionalization Movement in American Popular Culture

Download or read book Moral Panics, Mental Illness Stigma, and the Deinstitutionalization Movement in American Popular Culture written by Anthony Carlton Cooke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that cultural fascination with the “madperson” stems from the contemporaneous increase of chronically mentally ill persons in public life due to deinstitutionalization—the mental health reform movement leading to the closure of many asylums in favor of outpatient care. Anthony Carlton Cooke explores the reciprocal spheres of influence between deinstitutionalization, representations of the “murderous, mentally ill individual” in the horror, crime, and thriller genres, and the growth of public associations of violent crime with mental illness.