Firstly, things have changed massively since one flew over the cuccoos nest was written. It wasn't even representative at the time. As I understand, it's more an allegory for the wider society and about institutions. A modern psychiatric hospital is utterly unlike the place in that book in every respect. They still use electroshock therapy, because it has been proven to work. Now they do it under general anaesthetic and it's an altogether less messy affair. Watch this moving TED talk if you don't believe me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZrAGdZ1i8

Secondly, closely related to this is the famous Rosenhan experiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

The really relevant bit is this paragraph:

For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology.

I also remember that one participant had their habit of standing around outside the cafeteria waiting for it to open for lunch noted down by a nurse as "neurotic behaviour around eating and food" and again framed as part of their disorder and used as a reason to keep them there.

Remember though that this was in america in the 70s, and things have changed a lot since then. Partly as a direct result of that study, which made a huge impact on the profession and caused a lot of soul searching. Someone repeated it, I think in the 90s, and they were all just put on pills rather than being committed. The crucial difference being that one can choose not to take pills.