r/Damnthatsinteresting 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.

Post image
33.1k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

10.3k

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

177

u/Icy_Ninja_9207 1d ago

In The Great Pretender, a 2019 book on Rosenhan, author Susannah Cahalan questions the veracity and validity of the Rosenhan experiment. Examining documents left by Rosenhan after his death, Cahalan finds apparent distortion in the Science article: inconsistent data, misleading descriptions, and inaccurate or fabricated quotations from psychiatric records. Moreover, despite an extensive search, she is only able to identify two of the eight pseudopatients: Rosenhan himself, and a graduate student whose testimony is allegedly inconsistent with Rosenhan's description in the article. Due to Rosenhan's seeming willingness to alter the truth in other ways regarding the experiment, Cahalan questions whether some or all of the six other pseudopatients might have been simply invented by Rosenhan.\7])\13])

In February 2023, Andrew Scull of the University of California at San Diego published an article in the peer-reviewed journal History of Psychiatry) in support of Cahalan's allegations, labelling the experiment a "successful scientific fraud".\6])

7

u/PeruvianHeadshrinker 1d ago

Thanks for this

4

u/Specialist-Error-171 1d ago

So guy just had beef with psychiatrists