David Rosenhan's Experiment

1610 Words4 Pages

We all have our own perception of psychiatric hospitals. Some people may see them as a terrifying experience, and others may see them as a way to help people who cannot keep their disorders under control. David Rosenhan's perception led him to a variety of questions. How could psychiatric hospitals know if a patient was insane or not? What is like to be a patient there? According to Rosenhans study, psychiatric hospitals have no way of truly knowing what patients are insane or not; they quickly jump to labeling and depersonalizing their patients instead of spending time with them to observe their personality.

David Rosenhans experiment contained two parts; the first was admitting pseudo-patients into psychiatric hospitals without the doctors or nurses knowledge. David Rosenhan and his participants all willingly committed themselves to the psychiatric hospital. “8 people without any history of psychiatric illness presented themselves at various mental hospitals. Each of these pseudo-patients arrived at the admissions office complaining of a single (feigned) symptom: vague auditory hallucinations” (Scribner). All of the participants came from a different background and were admitted into several different hospitals.

They quickly gained admission to the hospitals; not a single person was denied. “Immediately upon admission to the psychiatric ward, the pseudo-patient ceased simulating any symptoms of abnormality” (Rosenhan). The pseudo-patients immediately started acting sane after being admitted into the hospital. The staff members were quick to diagnosed them with a psychiatric disorder upon admission. “Seven of the volunteers were diagnosed as schizophrenic and the other as a manic depressive psychotic” (Brown). All of the ps...

... middle of paper ...

...atients need and deserve.

Works Cited

Brown, Craig. "You Must Be Mad to Trust Your Shrink." LexisNexis Academic. LexisNexis, 17 Feb. 2004. Web. 20 Feb. 2011.

Hammond, Claudia. "One Flew into the Cuckoo's Nest; Health When a 1970s Psychologist Faked Symptoms of Mental Illness in Order to Study Psychiatric Treatment in Hospitals, the Results Caused Outrage. But Have Diagnostic Lessons Been Learnt, Asks Claudia Hammond." LexisNexis Academic. LexisNexis, 29 July 2009. Web. 20 Feb. 2011.

Rosenhan, David L. "On Being Sane in Insane Places." Science 19 Jan. 1973: 250-58. Print.

Scribner, Christopher M. "Rosenhan Revisited." Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 32.2 (2001): 215-6. PsycARTICLES. Web. 20 Feb. 2011.

Walsh, Jason. "All in our heads: have we taken psychiatry too far?"Irish Times 14 Aug.2010, ProQuest Newsstand, ProQuest. Web. 10 Feb. 2011.

Show More
Related

  • Kings Park State Hospital Summary

    1457 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the moment Lucy Winer was admitted to Kings Park on June 21, 1967, following several unsuccessful suicide attempts, she experienced firsthand the horrors of mental institutions during this time period in America. As Lucy stepped into Ward 210, the female violent ward of Building 21, she was forced to strip naked at the front desk, symbolizing how patient’s personhood status was stripped from them as soon as they arrived into these institutions. During her second day at Kings Park, Lucy started crying and another patient informed her not to cry because “they’ll hurt her”. This instance, paired with the complete lack of regulations, instilled a fear in Lucy that anyone at this institution could do anything to her without any punishment, which had haunted her throughout her entire stay at Kings Park. Dr. Jeanne Schultz was one of the first psychiatrists to examine Lucy and diagnosed her with chronic differentiated schizophrenia. In an interview with Dr. Schultz decades later, Lucy found out that many patients were

    Read More

  • The Mad Among Us By Gerald Grob

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book “The Mad Among Us-A History of the Care of American’s Mentally Ill,” the author Gerald Grob, tells a very detailed accounting of how our mental health system in the United States has struggled to understand and treat the mentally ill population. It covers the many different approaches that leaders in the field of mental health at the time used but reading it was like trying to read a food label. It is regurgitated in a manner that while all of the facts are there, it lacks any sense humanity. While this may be more of a comment on the author or the style of the author, it also is telling of the method in which much of the policy and practice has come to be. It is hard to put together without some sense of a story to support the action.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Susan Sheehan's Schizophrenia

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1978, Susan Sheehan took an interest in Sylvia Frumkin, a schizophrenic who spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals. For more than two years, Sheehan followed Sylvia around, observing when Sylvia talked to herself, sitting in on sessions with Sylvia’s doctors, and at times, sleeping in the same bed as Sylvia during her stay at the psychiatric centers. Through Sheehan’s intensive report on Sylvia’s life, readers are able to obtain useful information on what it’s like to live with this disorder, how impairing it can be for them, and the symptoms and causes to look out for; likewise, readers can get an inside look of how some mental hospitals are run and how a misdiagnosis can negatively impact someone’s life.

    Read More

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

    Read More

  • Mental Illnesses In The 1800's

    269 Words  | 1 Pages

    " This improved the treatment of patients but the mentally ill that weren't in this asylum may have

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Film Madness: A History

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Madness: A History, a film by the Films Media Group, is the final installment of a five part series, Kill or Cure: A History of Medical Treatment. It presents a history of the medical science community and it’s relationship with those who suffer from mental illness. The program uses original manuscripts, photos, testimonials, and video footage from medical archives, detailing the historical progression of doctors and scientists’ understanding and treatment of mental illness. The film compares and contrasts the techniques utilized today, with the methods of the past. The film offers an often grim and disturbing recounting of the road we’ve taken from madness to illness.

    Read More

  • The Conditions of Mental Asylums During the Late 19th Century

    1133 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 1840’s, the United States started to build public insane asylums instead of placing the insane in almshouses or jail. Before this, asylums were maintained mostly by religious factions whose main goal was to purify the patient (Hartford 1). By the 1870’s, the conditions of these public insane asylums were very unhealthy due to a lack of funding. The actions of Elizabeth J. Cochrane (pen name Nellie Bly), during her book “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” significantly heightened the conditions of these mental asylums during the late 1800s.

    Read More

  • Malpractice In Central Park 5

    879 Words  | 2 Pages

    Leo, R. A. (2009, September). Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

    Read More

  • Mental Illness in the 1950's

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    As science has evolved, so have treatments for mental illnesses have over time. The medical model is described as the view that psychological disorders are medical diseases with a biological origin (King, 2010, pg. 413). Abnormal behavior that categorizes some disorders can be impacted by biological factors such as genes, psychological factors such as childhood experiences, and even sociocultural factors such as gender and race (King, 2010). Treatments such as psychosurgery (lobotomy) , drug therapy (pharmaceuticals), electroconclusive therapy, and psychoanalysis are used to treat a wide range of psychological disorders. Back then, the public’s negative views on mental illnesses also went as far to associate with the people who treated it; psychiatrists. “Nunnally (1961) found that the public evaluated professionals who treated mental disorders significantly more negatively than those who treat physical disorders,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). People back then didn’t see the point in “paying to be told that they were crazy”. However, in today’s society, it is now acceptable to seek help from psychiatric professionals; we are seeing more and more people seek mental health treatment. “In terms of facility-based records of utilization (Manderscheid and Henderson 1998), the data suggest that the rate of utilization of professional mental health services has at least doubled and maybe tripled, between the 1950’s and today,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). In the 1950’s, neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine were introduced to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. These drugs block a neurotransmitter called dopamine from getting to the brain, which in turn reduce schizophrenic symptoms, however there are some side effects such as substantial twitching of the neck, arms, and legs, and even dysphoria or lack of pleasure. (King, 2010, pg.

    Read More

  • Media Portrayal of Mental Illness in America

    3886 Words  | 8 Pages

    Star,S.A.(1955). The public’s ideas about mental illness. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Mental Health.

    Read More

  • What Is Mental Health As A Social Justice Issue?

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    In today’s society, the stigma around mental health has caused many people to fear seeking medical treatment for problems they are dealing with. With an abundance of hateful outlooks and stereotypical labels such as: crazy, psycho, and dangerous, it is clear that people with a mental illness have a genuine reason to avoid pursuing medical treatments. Along with mental health stigma, psychiatric facilities that patients with a mental health issue attend in order to receive treatment obtain an excessive amount of unfavorable stereotypes.

    Read More

  • Isolation In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1614 Words  | 4 Pages

    The paid people were isolated for only a few days or a week and after only a few hours of being isolated, they started to crave human interaction. “When they emerged from the experiment they found it hard to shake this altered sense of reality,” Similarly, the narrator had an altered sense of reality and she came to thinking that she had come from the wallpaper of which she thought was changing constantly. The people involved in the experiment were “convinced that the whole room was in motion, or that objects were constantly changing shape and size.” (Bond, Michael; How extreme isolation warps the mind). The narrator was sure that the wallpaper was changing shape and size as well.

    Read More

  • Asch And Milgram's Experiment Essay

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Classification Systems in Psychiatry

    1536 Words  | 4 Pages

    Doward, J. (2013), Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist? The Observer 12 May.

    Read More

  • What is Schizophrenia?

    870 Words  | 2 Pages

    Burton, Neel. "A Brief History of Schizophrenia." 8 September 2012. Psychology Today. 17 12 2013.

    Read More

More about David Rosenhan's Experiment

Open Document