On Being Sane in Insane Places Research Essay Julia De Angelis Due Date: 4th March 2015 Teacher: Gareth Rees 'On being sane in insane places' is a study by David Rosenhan in 1973 which attempted to test the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses and the treatment of those in psychiatric hospitals. He tested this by conducting a study in which eight 'sane' people attempted to gain admission into different psychiatric hospitals. They organised psychiatric appointments in which during their interviews they complained of hearing voices repeating the words "empty", "thud" and "hollow". Seven of the pseudo-patients were admitted under the diagnosis of schizophrenia and one under the diagnosis of manic depressive psychosis. Once admitted …show more content…
The notes gathered by the pseudo-patients were used to conclude how patients experience a psychiatric ward. However, the pseudo-patient's perceptions were biased as they do not reflect the needs and perceptions of actual patients. Rosenhan (1973) makes assumptions about what patient's consider is 'quality care' from a biased view, rather than establishing criteria that reflected authentic experiences of psychiatric patients. The study can be seen to have low ecological validity as it can be argued that the pseudo-patients aren't really insane therefore it may have been difficult for them to behave "normally" in the hospital environments. (Spitzer, …show more content…
It would have been difficult to take notes on all the aspects of the ward, forcing the pseudo-patients to make selections of what to record, introducing bias in the qualitative information collected. It would have been difficult to analyse all the data produced, especially when it is an unstructured observation, which would make comparisons between the hospitals and staff difficult. Furthermore, Rosenhan (1973) did not take into account common psychiatric practice, which required psychiatrists to admit a patient based on possible mental illness. Studies have shown that doctors and psychiatrists are more likely to make a type two error (call a healthy person sick) than a type one error (diagnosing a sick person as healthy) (Kirk, Kutchins,
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.
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.
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.
...s that the DSM can also falsely determine ones specific mental health, showing the struggle between diagnosing someone with genuine disorders and excessively diagnosing individuals.
“On Being Sane in Insane Places”, by David Rosenhan, touched on topics in research within the field of abnormal psychology that should be explored. These particular subjects included both the diagnosis and the treatment of those with mental disorders, specifically he was trying to expose problems with the mental health system as a whole. However, the way his studies were conducted had flaws, especially in the essential features of research: ethics, reliability, and validity. Lacking in these features created studies that are untrustworthy sources of information and provides questionable conclusions.
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.
Since Pat Barker's Regeneration is set in a mental hospital, it seems fitting that questions about mental disease and the definition of sanity should be raised. At the very start of the book, Rivers and Bryce are discussing the case of Siegfreid Sassoon, a dissenting officer of the British army. As they discuss his diagnosis of "neurasthenia," Barker is laying the groundwork for one of Regeneration's many themes: no one is completely qualified to judge the sane from the insane, for insanity finds its way into us all. The ambiguity surrounding the definition and treatment of neurasthenia offers just a glimpse into the ever-changing and highly subjective world of mental evaluation.
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.
The BBC documentary, Mental: A History of the Madhouse, delves into Britain’s mental asylums and explores not only the life of the patients in these asylums, but also explains some of the treatments used on such patients (from the early 1950s to the late 1990s). The attitudes held against mental illness and those afflicted by it during the time were those of good intentions, although the vast majority of treatments and aid being carried out against the patients were anything but “good”. In 1948, mental health began to be included in the NHS (National Health Service) as an actual medical condition, this helped to bring mental disabilities under the umbrella of equality with all other medical conditions; however, asylums not only housed people
The Yellow Wallpaper as a Guide To Insanity "There comes John, and I must put this away- he hates to have me write a word" (p659). As evident by the above quote, Gilman places the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" as secluded as she could be; she is placed in a large house, surrounded only by her husband and by little help (Jennie), when it is unfortunately clear that her relationship with her husband is based on distance and misunderstanding: "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so"(p 663). Gilman further confines her narrator as it becomes clear that the poor soul has absolutely no one to talk to; that is, no one who can understand her. The narrator is cornered by her loved ones, she is isolated from the world under her husband-doctor orders, she is thus physically confined to her shaky mental realm. The next aspect of the narrator that zooms us into her state is her tone: "I really have discovered something at last..
For many decades the mentally ill or insane have been hated, shunned, and discriminated against by the world. They have been thrown into cruel facilities, said to help cure their mental illnesses, where they were tortured, treated unfairly, and given belittling names such as retards, insane, demons, and psychos. However, reformers such as Dorothea Dix thought differently of these people and sought to help them instead. She saw the inhumanity in these facilities known as insane asylums or mental institutions, and showed the world the evil that wandered inside these asylums. Although movements have been made to improve conditions in insane asylums, and were said to help and treat the mentally ill, these brutally abusive places were full of disease and disorder, and were more like concentration camps similar to those in Europe during WWII than hospitals.
Our group members feel that Rosenhan’s “On Being Sane in Insane Places” is an important topic for psychology majors to explore because of the impact it had on Psychology. This study highlighted the fact that diagnostic labels linger beyond the presence of symptoms. It also showed the lack of attention patients were receiving from the staff at psychiatric hospitals in the time period the experiment was conducted. Beyond the experiment itself, it led to further research which was important to the
Ossa-Richardson, Anthony. Possession or Insanity? Two Views from the Victorian Lunatic Asylum 74: 553-575. Print.
In 1950s the construction of new psychiatric centres took place in order to treat people with mental disorders. Local authorities provided financial resources to sustain these establishments of psychiatry. Apparently those psychiatric centres were treating the patients in unappropriated ways and inhuman acts as well as demanding them to remain inside the psychiatric centres for the rest of
The development of the world has lots of good advantages for men; but besides all these it has also bad effects, too; as the illnesses and most importantly the mental illnesses. As the centuries go on our responsibilities get much harder and this causes stress and some other mental diseases, too, to some people and this makes a danger; but I'm not talking about the ones who are consciously in mental hospitals. The main idea is that, we call the people who are in these hospitals insane; but maybe they are saner than the ones who are out in the society because the ones who are consciously in these hospitals are the ones who are aware of them and willing to be healed. However, the ones who are out in the society, who are among us and we don't notice, are not aware of their true reality. The ones who are aware of it are not the ones who are real insane and the society's duty is not to avoid insanity but to help the ones who are in that kind of situation and to help them.