Dean R. Brooks

Biography

Dr. Dean Kent Brooks, M.D., was born in Everett, Washington, in 1916. He was the head of the Oregon State Hospital in 1975 when the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) was filmed there. He starred, surprising enough, as the head of the psychiatric hospital in the film, “Dr. John Spivey, M.D.” He attended the University of Kansas Medical School in Kansas City, Kansas, and graduated from there on June 1, 1942. He was first licensed in Oregon to practice psychiatry on January 21, 1950. He retired from the practice of Psychiatric Medicine on December 31, 1999. During the filming of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), he diagnosed actor William Redfield (who played psychiatric hospital patient “Harding”) with Leukemia (this was long before the days of bone marrow transplants), and gave Mr. Redfield 18 months to live (he died 18 months later, pretty much to the day). He never had a single complaint filed against him in his long and distinguished career as a psychiatrist.