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In this occasionally humorous but generally grim story, a young psychologist just out of school decides to undertake a one-woman crusade to investigate abuses in mental institutions, and she voluntarily checks into one of the worst she can find. There, she is horribly abused by the staff. When they visit, her parents are fooled -- by the psychiatrists and by her behavior on the medications prescribed for her -- into believing that she is a legitimate tenant of the institution, and they refuse to help her check out. Eventually, the head psychiatrist's exceptionally loony behavior becomes sufficiently outrageous that the institution is investigated by outsiders, and she (and others) are released. This drama is based on a true story.