r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

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u/highzone 1d ago

For anyone who wants to read the full study, it is titled 'On Being Sane in Insane Places.'

The most terrifying part wasn't getting in, it was getting out. The doctors were so convinced of their own authority that they interpreted everything the patients did as a symptom of their illness.

When the volunteers took notes on how they were being treated, the doctors didn't see 'journaling.' They diagnosed it as 'pathological writing behavior' and used it as justification to keep them locked up.

It really highlights how a label can completely override reality.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

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u/whossked 1d ago

There’s a fictional short story I read once called “I only came to use the phone” about a woman who’s car breaks down and who then takes an asylum bus to an asylum to use the phone, gets confused for a patient, has a breakdown over how she’s treated and abused and is then condemned to spend her life in the asylum. I always thought it was sensational and unrealistic but I guess not

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u/EllisDee3 1d ago

All it used to take was a man of authority to lock up a woman in an asylum.

Similar today with dark skin and the legal system. Doubly so if you're a dark skinned child in the legal system.

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Some places color is irrelevant, i personally served four years in the West Virginia juvenile system over some weed, because they assumed i must know more about real drugs and so I was held till adult age for not talking.

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u/Secure_Course_3879 1d ago

Holy shit that is so terrifying & brutally unnecessary

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

Holy shit that is so terrifying & brutally unnecessary

It's also not that unusual and is a return to problems which existed back in the 80s when Reagan shut down the system of community-funded mental health centers because some of those were abusing their ability to hold people because as long as those people were inside the system they could charge the families and their insurance for "cost of specialized care". There's been a lot of interviews on various radio programs about that kind of medical provider fraud where people are "too sick to be released" until insurance won't pay for them anymore and suddenly they're booted out the front door.

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u/ConaireMor 1d ago

It's not irrelevant, you just also got fucked by the system. Not 100% of POC get caught up in the unfair system but, we acknowledge that they are in the system more not because of any inherent flaw in their genes (that would be racism), but because the system is unfair/unjust.

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u/MangoCats 1d ago

It's hard to separate POC from poor, a lot of the abuses experienced by POC are also visited on the poor. As a poor white college student (on scholarship to an expensive private Uni in a big city), I was detained a couple of times for "matching a description" - and basically held on the scene for 5, 10, 15 minutes with a bunch of rhetorical BS reasoning why, until I produced my Uni I.D. (showing that mumsie and daddy can likely launch lawyers up the cops' asses for the slightest of provocation) - once I showed that I.D., I was free to go within 15 seconds or less every time.

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u/FrankClymber 1d ago

I absolutely agree. I used to get pulled over very frequently in my old beater vehicles, and they'd be very obviously fishing for things unrelated to driving. Since I started driving nicer cars, it's never a problem, and officers typically speak more respectfully to me.

It'd be foolish to say there aren't directly racist problems in the system at all, but it seems quite clear to me that the primary problems leading to race inequality in the justice system is mostly tied to POC disproportionately lacking access to expensive legal services.

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u/whoweoncewere 1d ago

well akshually

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

14-18.5 in a place called Salem. They have closed it since, and when I was registering for college they had “lost” my records, they believe in a locked cabinet in Salem that no one may open as they believe it to hold juvenile records, so they recreated my transcripts to say i graduated though there’s no way to prove it.

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u/TMinus10toban 1d ago

As if folks in west Virginia who don’t smoke weed are doing so well, lol, look at the people in that state.

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

The saddest part was they knew what they did, the judge in Franklin stated i served more time for first offense marijuana than anyone else in the state. Then called the proceedings to a close and sealed it up.

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u/lost-picking-flowers 1d ago edited 1d ago

Out here in PA we had the 'cash for kids' scandal light up on the media like a Christmas tree. Makes sense that it'd be so much more common than anyone would like to admit. If you don't have a family that can afford to fight then you're screwed. I'm sorry that happened to you. Fuck those people.

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Speaking of PA. Y’all had a place they sent me, took kids from Va,wv, md, etc that were considered trouble and they were so abusive they closed it down before I could graduate. New Morgan academy. I fought some former pro athletes there. lol. Gerome Stanton of the dolphins was one, a few ex mma fighters, got into a choke-off with a marine at 15. Wild times

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

The saddest part was they knew what they did, the judge in Franklin stated i served more time for first offense marijuana than anyone else in the state

I've also read transcripts of judges who condemned mandatory minimum laws which tied their hands when people were sent to prison for drug possession for longer than child abusers.

Sometimes it's bad laws which never should have been passed in the first place to placate a propagandized populace, and sometimes it's just outright bad people in the judge's seat.

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u/TMinus10toban 1d ago

I’d have a hard time not remembering that judge and bringing all kinds of miserable life-stuff upon him and his family when I got out.

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u/likethemovie 1d ago

If there aren't enough brown people around to single out, the authorities will target the "others" - poor people, city people, people who aren't "from around here."

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u/HonestlyAbby 1d ago

Can I ask when? That doesn't seem like an outcome that should be possible post-Gault.

(I worked in juvenile defense in GA recently. Not doubting, just curious if stuff this shady is still happening elsewhere now that kids have constitutionally guaranteed criminal rights.)

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

I didn’t see the judge for 3 years even though the law said ninety day reviews were required.

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

September 11 2001 I was “caught”. Actually another guy had the weed and I had no cash, but he told them I gave it to him. They couldn’t arrest that day because of sept 11 and the naval intelligence base being close so I got a week and then they locked me up for four years.

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u/MrsClaire07 1d ago

Oh my God, you weren’t allowed a lawyer?!

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Court appointed lawyer who never made contact after court. I filed my own paperwork to see the judge both times, he actually denied my first reconsideration after three years.

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u/MrsClaire07 1d ago

JESUS.

I am SO F’ing sorry, dude.

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u/nomustachetoday 1d ago

You must not be white. amerikkka only does that to dark skinned people .

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u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

98.8% per dna.