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

This book argues that cultural fascination with the madperson stems from the contemporaneous increase of chronically mentally ill persons in public life due to deinstitutionalizationthe 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.