Rosenhan's experiment: the mentally sane in the place of the lunatics

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 1973, an experiment was carried out in the United States called "Mentally healthy in the place of lunatics." This study called into question the reliability of all psychiatric diagnostics and caused a storm in the world of psychiatry. The experiment was carried out by a psychologist named David Rosenhan. He proved that it is certainly not possible at all to identify a mental illness.

8 people - three psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, an artist, a housewife and Rosenhan himself - went to psychiatric hospitals with complaints of auditory hallucinations. Naturally, they did not have such problems. All of these people agreed to pretend to be sick and then tell the doctors that they were okay.

And then the oddities began. The doctors did not believe the words of the "patients" that they were doing well, although they behaved quite adequately. The hospital staff continued to force them to take pills and only released the participants after forcible treatment.

After that, another group of study participants visited 12 more psychiatric clinics with the same complaints - auditory hallucinations. They went to both renowned private clinics and ordinary local hospitals.

What do you think? All participants in this experiment were again recognized as sick!

The pseudo-patients said that they hear voices that say words such as "emptiness", "fall", "abyss" to them. All these words were chosen by Rosenhan, as they indicated the presence of an existential crisis in the personality.

After 7 study participants were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and one of them with depressive psychosis, they were all hospitalized.

As soon as they were brought to the clinics, the "patients" began to behave normally and convince the staff that they no longer hear voices. However, it took an average of 19 days to convince the doctors that they were no longer sick. One of the participants generally spent 52 days in the hospital.

All participants in the experiment were discharged with a diagnosis of "schizophrenia in remission" entered into their medical records.

Thus, these people were labeled as mentally ill.

The results of this study have raised a storm of indignation in the world of psychiatry.

Many psychiatrists began to claim that they would never fall for this trick and would definitely be able to distinguish pseudo-patients from real ones. Moreover, doctors from one of the psychiatric clinics contacted Rosenhan and asked him to send them his pseudo-patients without warning, claiming that they would be able to identify the simulants in no time.

Rosenhan accepted the challenge. In the next three months, the administration of this clinic was able to identify 19 simulators out of 193 patients admitted to them.

But now fasten your seat belts … Rosenhan naturally "threw" all the doctors - he did not send anyone!

This experiment led to the following conclusion: "It is obvious that in psychiatric hospitals, we can not guaranteed to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy."

Do you know what is most interesting?

In the first part of the experiment with pseudo-patients, the real patients in the clinics began to suspect that the participants sent by Rosenhan were simulators, while the hospital staff was unable to notice this.

To be more precise, 35 real patients were able to determine that the participants in the experiment were faking. The patients came up to them and said: “You can't be nuts. You are probably some kind of journalist or professor sent here for the purpose of checking …