Rosenhan- Being Sane In Insane Places
Summary
TLDRIn the late 19th century, journalist Nellie Bly feigned insanity to expose asylum conditions, while in the 1970s, psychologist David Rosenhan's 'On Being Sane in Insane Places' study challenged the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis. Rosenhan and his colleagues, posing as patients, were admitted to 12 hospitals with a fabricated symptom. Despite behaving normally post-admission, none were detected as sane by staff, raising questions about the validity of psychiatric practices and the treatment of mental health patients.
Takeaways
- 🏥 In the 19th century, madness started being seen as a disease managed by psychiatrists, leading to the establishment of asylums.
- 🔍 Journalist Nellie Bly feigned insanity in 1887 to expose the ease of misdiagnosis and the poor conditions within asylums.
- 📚 Nellie Bly's book '10 Days in a Mad-House' detailed her experiences and critiqued the psychiatric practices of her time.
- 🤔 The 1960s and 1970s were periods of significant questioning of established ideas, including psychiatry, leading to the rise of anti-psychiatry.
- 🧠 Thomas Szasz and other anti-psychiatrists argued that mental illness was a myth and that psychiatry was a pseudoscience.
- 👨⚕️ David Rosenhan's experiment in the 1970s aimed to test the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses by having healthy individuals pretend to be patients.
- 🗣️ Rosenhan's 'pseudopatients' only faked one symptom, saying they heard a voice saying 'empty,' to test diagnostic accuracy.
- 🏥 All pseudopatients were admitted to hospitals with a diagnosis of insanity, despite not exhibiting any other symptoms.
- 🕵️♂️ Once admitted, pseudopatients behaved normally but were never recognized as sane by hospital staff.
- 📉 Rosenhan's study highlighted the potential flaws in psychiatric diagnosis and the experience of being a patient in a mental hospital.
Q & A
What was the main purpose of Nelly Bly's undercover investigation at the asylum?
-Nelly Bly's main purpose was to test the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis and to expose the terrible conditions inside the asylum.
How did Nelly Bly manage to get admitted to the women's lunatic asylum in New York?
-Nelly Bly feigned insanity by pulling strange faces, tugging her hair out, and claiming everyone around her was crazy, which led to her being admitted by two doctors.
What was the significance of the symptom the pseudo-patients used in David Rosenhan's experiment?
-The pseudo-patients used the symptom of hearing a voice saying 'Hollow, empty, thud' which did not represent any known schizophrenic disorder, allowing Rosenhan to test whether doctors would diagnose them as insane despite the lack of typical symptoms.
What were the two aims of David Rosenhan's study on psychiatric diagnosis?
-The two aims were to investigate whether psychiatric labels would be used inappropriately in the absence of symptoms, and to observe the experience of being a patient in a psychiatric hospital.
How many of the pseudo-patients in Rosenhan's experiment were detected as sane by the hospital staff?
-None of the pseudo-patients were ever detected as sane by the hospital staff during their stay.
What was the role of the anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960s and 70s?
-The anti-psychiatry movement questioned the medical model of mental illness, suggesting that it was a pseudo-science and that the concept of mental illness was a myth.
What did Thomas Szasz argue about the nature of psychiatry and mental illness?
-Thomas Szasz argued that psychiatry was a pseudo-science and that the very idea of mental illness was a myth.
How did Irving Goffman suggest that mental hospitals could contribute to insanity?
-Irving Goffman suggested that the mere presence in a mental hospital could be enough to drive people insane due to the dehumanizing and stigmatizing environment.
What was the title of David Rosenhan's study, and what does it signify?
-The title of the study was 'On Being Sane in Insane Places', signifying the experiment's focus on the experience and perception of sanity within psychiatric institutions.
What was the reaction of the hospital staff when the pseudo-patients claimed their symptoms had disappeared?
-Despite the pseudo-patients claiming their symptoms had disappeared and expressing a desire to be released, the hospital staff did not detect their sanity and continued to treat them as patients.
How long did it take for one of the pseudo-patients to be released from the hospital?
-One of the pseudo-patients was not released until two months after their admission, despite behaving normally and claiming their symptom had disappeared.
Outlines
🏥 The Birth of Psychiatry and Nelly Bly's Asylum Expose
This paragraph delves into the historical context of psychiatry, highlighting the 19th-century shift in perception of madness as a disease. It discusses the establishment of asylums and the emergence of psychiatrists as experts in managing mental health. The narrative pivots to Nelly Bly, a journalist who, in 1887, feigned insanity to expose the flaws in psychiatric diagnosis and the deplorable conditions within asylums. Her experiences, documented in '10 Days in a Mad-House,' underscored the ease with which one could be misdiagnosed and the urgent need for reform in mental health care.
🔍 Rosenhan's Experiment: Challenging the Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnosis
The second paragraph continues the theme of questioning psychiatric practices, this time through David Rosenhan's groundbreaking experiment in the 1970s. Rosenhan and his colleagues, posing as patients, aimed to test the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis by attempting to get admitted to hospitals with a fabricated symptom. Once admitted, they ceased faking any symptoms and behaved normally. Despite this, none of the pseudo-patients were detected as sane by the hospital staff, leading to the publication of their findings under the title 'Sane in Insane Places.' The experiment raised profound questions about the validity of psychiatric labels and the experience of being a patient in a psychiatric ward, drawing parallels to Nelly Bly's earlier work and further highlighting the need for a reevaluation of mental health practices.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Psychiatry
💡Asylums
💡Nelly Bly
💡Anti-psychiatry movement
💡David Rosenhan
💡Pseudopatients
💡Diagnostic labels
💡Mental hospital
💡Schizophrenia
💡Covert participant observation
💡Sane in insane places
Highlights
Madness was not considered a disease until the 19th century.
Psychiatrists emerged as experts to manage madness in the 19th century.
Journalist Elizabeth Cochran, aka Nelly Bly, tested psychiatry by feigning madness in 1887.
Nelly Bly's book '10 Days in a Mad-House' exposed the ease of deceiving doctors and asylum conditions.
David Rosenhan's experiment aimed to test the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis.
The 1960s and 70s were periods of questioning established ideas, including psychiatry.
Anti-psychiatrists like Thomas Szasz and R.D. Laing criticized the medical model of mental illness.
Irving Goffman suggested that mental hospitals could drive people insane.
David Rosenhan's experiment involved 'pseudo patients' getting admitted to hospitals.
Pseudo patients faked a single symptom to get admitted.
The symptom 'hearing a voice saying "Hollow empty thud"' was chosen for its uniqueness.
All pseudo patients were admitted to the hospital despite behaving normally.
The study had two aims: investigating psychiatric labels and the experience of being hospitalized.
None of the pseudo patients were detected as sane by hospital staff.
The experiment showed that mental hospitals of the 1970s were not much different from the asylums of the 1890s.
The experiment had a significant impact on the field of psychiatry.
Transcripts
[Music]
there's always been Madness but it
wasn't until the 19th century that it
came to be seen as a disease to be
managed by a new group of experts
psychiatrists new asylums were built
their walls and bars marking the
supposedly clear-cut boundary between
the sane and the insane but in 1887 an
enterprising journalist called Elizabeth
Cochran who wrote Under the name of
Nelly blly challenged
this Nelly Blye was on a mission to test
out Psychiatry so what she did she
checked into a boarding house and she
started pulling strange faces and
tugging her hair out and saying everyone
around her was crazy and sure enough it
wasn't long before two doctors had her
shipped off to the woman's lunatic
asylum in New
York once inside she behaved perfectly
normally but it made no difference as
she later wrote the saner I acted the
crazier they thought I was her articles
in her book 10 days in a mad house
showed just how easy it had been to fool
the doctors and just how terrible
conditions were inside the Asylum 85
years later a clinical psychologist
called David rosenhan would do much the
same
[Music]
thing the 1960s was a time of Social and
Cultural Revolution established ideas
institutions and professions were
questioned and one of them was
Psychiatry the 1970s were a very
turbulent period for Psychiatry
um at the time there were a group of
psychiatrists well in the 1960s anyway
and going through to the 70s there a
group of psychiatrists who actually
badged themselves as anti psychiatrists
the medical model saying that this is a
a largely physical thing that people
have become mentally ill and the anti
Psychiatry movement was saying that
perhaps we should we should see this in
a different way Thomas SATs argued that
Psychiatry was a pseudo science and the
Very idea of mental illness was a myth
Irving gothman suggested that just being
in a mental hospital was enough to drive
people insane and RD Lang claimed that
what Psychiatry said was mental illness
was just a rational response to an
insane world what bound them together
was objection a horror at the way that
psch was being practiced in those days
people were Lely just incarcerated in
big hospitals I mean we used to call
them Looney bins and in a way although
it's a
pejorative it is like it was like a dust
bin for people really it was horrible a
space where you can meet with her where
she's not going to be frightened that R
Lang was the most famous of these anti
psychiatrists it was while listening to
One of Lang's lectures that David
rosenhan wondered if there might be a
way of actually testing the reliability
of psychiatric
diagnosis can we really tell the sane
from the
insane so one evening he called some
friends and students and asked them if
they'd like to take part in an
experiment his idea was to see if they
could get themselves admitted to
hospitals as psychiatric patients and
surprisingly seven of them three women
and four men agreed one of them Martin
Seligman now himself a world famous
psychologist later explained that
rosenhan could be very persuasive and he
had to be because this was a tough
assignment I think it' been very
frightening for the pseudo patients when
they turn up these
institutions very intimidating they have
a certain smell to them however much you
see pictures of them it's nothing like
walking in it's it's a physical
experience of the there's you really
can't put into words to smell the
experience the feeling of the place it's
intimidating there would be patience
none of whom had any history of
psychiatric disorder practiced their
roles including how to avoid swallowing
the mass of tablets that'd be sure to be
given they stopped shaving showering and
brushing their teeth and 5 days later
they set off and so began one of the
most notorious experiments ever
conducted in Psychology an experiment
from which Psychiatry never quite
recovered
[Music]
rosenhan and his Confederates traveled
to 12 hospitals in five different states
in the US to try to get a more
representative sample some of the
hospitals were old some new some were
short staffed others well
staffed after calling for an appointment
the wouldbe patients presented
themselves at the hospitals they didn't
act crazy like Nelly BL had done they
just faked a single symptom
yes when the Pudo patients turn up at
the hospital they would just say I'm
hearing a voice and it's saying to me
Hollow empty thud and the significance
of this uh is that it doesn't represent
any known symptom of a schizophrenic
disorder uh so it's quite unique it's
made up no one would have accounted
anything like this before so rosenhan
was giving the doctors a chance here and
apart from saying they heard the voice
and giving a false ID everything else
the pseudo patient said was true
significant events in their life were
described exactly as they had been and
then what happened they were all
diagnosed as
insan and admitted to the
hospital all of them all of them once
admitted the pseudo patients stopped
faking the symptom and behaved in the
way they usually did hence the title of
the study being sane in insane places
when asked by staff how they were
feeling they said they were fine the
symptom had disappeared and could they
please be
released so what was rosenhan trying to
do here there were two aims to the study
the first one principally was to
investigate psychiatric labels as to
whether these would be used in
situations where they weren't
appropriate so this was first of all a
field experiment independent variable
being the lack of symptoms in the pseudo
patients once admitted and the dependent
variable the responses of the staff but
this wasn't all and the second aim of
the study was to get some data on what
it's actually like to be a patient in a
psychiatric hospital being sane in
insane places then was also a covert
participant observation study of the
experience of being hospitalized in a
psychiatric
ward so what did rosenan and his
Confederates find how long would it take
for their sanity to be detected by the
staff and what would they find out about
on the
inside how different were the Mental
Hospitals of the
1970s from the mad house of the 1890s
described by Nelly
[Music]
BL despite the fact that the hospitals
chosen were not particularly bad ones
and the pseudo patients behav quite
normally throughout their stay none of
them were ever detected by any member of
the hospital staff and this surprised
even rosenhan but I told friends I told
my family I get out when it's when I can
get out that's all be there for a couple
days and I I get out nobody knew I'd be
there for two months
浏览更多相关视频
Psychological Disorders: Crash Course Psychology #28
Strange answers to the psychopath test | Jon Ronson | TED
Il Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio spiegato da uno Psichiatra
Alternatives to psychiatric hospitals - Voices for Choices (7 of 13)
Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology
Proses Keperawatan Jiwa
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)