Patch Adams 🎥 1998 Movie Info

Plot Summary

In 1969, Hunter “Patch” Adams, after developing suicidal thoughts, admits himself to a mental institution. There, he finds that using humor, rather than doctor-centered psychotherapy, better helps his fellow patients and provides him with a new purpose. Because of this, he wants to become a medical doctor and leaves the facility. Two years later, he enrolls at the Medical College of Virginia as its oldest first-year student. Adams questions the school’s soulless approach to medical care, particularly why students do not work with patients until their third year, as well as the methods of the school’s dean, Walcott, who takes an instant dislike to him.

Adams is expelled from the medical school but is reinstated when it becomes apparent that his eccentric methods often improve his patients’ physical and mental health. He begins a friendship with fellow student Carin Fisher and develops his idea for a medical clinic built around his philosophy of treating patients using humor and compassion. With the help of Arthur Mendelson, a wealthy man who was a patient with Adams while in the mental hospital, he purchases 105 acres in West Virginia to construct the future Gesundheit! Institute. When the clinic opens, they treat patients without medical insurance and perform comedy sketches for them. Adams’s friendship with Fisher turns into romance.

When she reveals that she had been molested as a child, he reassures her that she can overcome her pain by helping others. Encouraged, Fisher wants to help a disturbed patient, Lawrence “Larry” Silver. However, Silver murders Fisher with a shotgun and then kills himself in a murder-suicide. Adams, guilt-ridden, questions the goodness in humanity. Standing on a cliff, he contemplates suicide again and asks God for an explanation. He sees a butterfly, and it reminds him that Fisher had always wished that she were a caterpillar that could turn into a butterfly and fly away.

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