The Real Hospital Behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Oregon State Hospital Documentary
54K views · Jul 6, 2026 · People & Blogs
Comments · 122
@ralphbieker8104 · 3 weeks ago
“IT’S NOW CALLED SALEM”!!!
2
@lisamcdonald9792 · 1 month ago
What an amazing video! I pray that the patients who were "finally reunited" with their families were made to feel fully at peace. ❤❤
3
@reneeparker7475 · 2 months ago (edited)
I now live in Oregon. I was born in and grew up in Virginia, about 35 miles east of a similar place there, Western State Mental Lunatic Asylum founded in 1828. One of it's directors, Dr. Joseph Dejarnette, who was an advocate or eugenics. He built his own "hospital" near Western State, which he controlled. I have seen that place and it struck me as evil and I was glad that it was closed and in decay.<br>One of my great-grandfathers is buried on the grounds of Western State in 1888. I don't know what he was there, but he is buried there in a grave marked only by a stone reading "1887."<br>Oregon is not the only place that this horror happened.
18
@darthmillennia · 2 months ago
Oh hey I live like 15 minutes from this :)) they have a really dope museum and the entry fee is $7!! It displays actual equipment used throughout the years and tells the stories of those that lived here. The museum employees were amazing too! The hospital itself has also gotten much better from what I’ve heard :))
35
@CatMomsCottage · 2 months ago (edited)
I’ve lived in Portland for nearly thirty years. I still remember the Oregonian’s front-page series about the hospital and the canisters back in the early 2000s. The descriptions of the areas they were still using were horrifying, and the forgotten ones in their copper tins were tragic. I’m so glad there are people like Phyllis working to reunite them with their families, and that they have a dignified, peaceful place to rest. <br><br>Having the second hospital in southern Oregon means families don’t have to travel as far to visit their loved ones. <br><br>Also, the story mentioned that a percentage of people at the hospital were there because they’d reached the coverage limits of their medical insurance. There had already been some movement on parity laws, and iirc, Oregon passed a law requiring health insurers to cover mental health needs the same as they do physical health conditions, whether chronic or acute. Mental health parity became a federal law a few years later.
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@spyderwebs78 · 2 months ago
Lifelong Oregonian here and this is in my hometown 😊 I drive by almost every day and they’ve built apartments/houses on some of land that had belonged to the OSH. They say there are “no bodies” left there but one can’t help but wonder if that’s really the case. It’s an eerily beautifully setting in the fall 🧡
4
@teresamquint · 1 month ago
I was doing ancestry and found out that my grandmother left my great aunt’s ashes there after she died in the hospital. I was able to get her ashes back so she could rest in a better place.
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@MichaelG-q6k · 1 month ago
I didn't know this was set in Oregon, but the movie/novel had a huge impact on my life. For decades, I avoided any sort of psychological therapy, for fear of getting caught up in something like this.
1
@rebeccamoore6382 · 1 month ago (edited)
In the early 2000s this was one of the most dangerous hospitals. Staff were being attacked daily, suffering life changing injuries. Admin didnt care, they just swept it under the rug. Oregons mental health system is backwards mess. You have to twist yourself into knots to get someone help. They wait till the person kills someone before they do anything about it
3
@toribern419 · 2 months ago
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POWEEePd0zg&t=2833">47:13</a> damn. That is incredibly sad. And such a beautiful person Phyllis is for bringing these ppl back together. ❤
6
@hrbailey379xhd · 2 months ago (edited)
"A state that didn’t know what to do with their broken minds". I think an argument could be made that they still don’t. I worked for some years in the care community and what we do to one another as humans, with no concern for our loved ones is still very prevalent in Oregon. Families still drop family members off at a care facility, sell all the assets and never show up again. Care attendants are still fired and arrested for abuse of residents. Corporations that own the care facilities only staff to the absolute bare minimum and even when given the opportunity to change the staffing levels, Oregon caves in to lobbyists rather than base on facts, numbers and science.
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@AlbertChupick · 1 month ago
Ken kessy was my favorite author he wrote one flew over the cocos nest I meet him in Dexter Oregon he told me about this hospital very bad
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