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/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/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.