Rachel Shaeffer: One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I just finished reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, but I'm confused about where the history is. Basically the story takes place in an insane asylum and revolves around three main characters. A half Native American man named Bromden who pretends to be deaf, McMurphy a ridiculous ginger guy, and the evil Nurse Ratched. Overall it was a pretty entertaining read and compared to Catcher in the Rye which I just read, it was as easy to get through as Harry Potter. My opinion is that Nurse Ratched is the crazy one, most of the patients seem pretty normal. All except a handful had themselves admitted. I guess they did that just to escape normal life. Even so, that doesn't explain what this has to do with history, which is exactly the question I asked myself as I turned the last page. So does anyone know? I tried looking it up online but that only brought up the main themes, two of which I knew already. The top three themes I found were that mental hospitals were seriously corrupt around the 1950's, Kesey portrayed women as either blood sucking demons or prostitutes, and Bromden's fear of the "Combine". I took the combine to mean anything that limited personal freedom like the government, so to Bromden the hospital. Am I missing the point? I guess I could speculate on the historical facts the author is trying to get across: maybe the government was especially limiting at that time, maybe the women's place in society was being shaken up, maybe everyone in America was crazy? I guess what I'm trying to say is that this book left me with several questions I need answered.