Theoretical Argument

David Rosenhan's On Being Sane In Insane Places Insanity is often described as a combination of behaviors brought about by certain mental disorders, which point towards abnormality and to a deranged state of mind. The word insane, however, is not a medical term. Psychiatrists and other medical practitioners often refer to it as psychosis, characterized by delusions and hallucinations. Although majority of patients are easily diagnosed with mental disorders, the reliability and validity of these diagnoses is often questioned.

In fact, many people judged to be sane and competent are more dangerous to themselves, their families, and their communities than the supposedly 'insane' patients locked up in psychiatric wards for a substantial amount of time. In light of the doubt cast on the various categories of symptoms that distinguish the sane from the insane, David Rosenhan sought to find out how capable hospital staff were in differentiating between genuinely sick patients from those who were actually sane and were only there for research purposes.

This text looks at the experiments Rosenhan and his team conducted, their findings and also the implications The Rosenhan Experiment Conducted in the 1970s, the Rosenhan experiment was bound to have its mark in history as the best of its kind in challenging the validity of psychiatric diagnoses. Rosenhan, himself a psychologist, together with three women and four other men referred to as the pseudopatients feigned hallucinations in the form of hearing voices in order to be admitted as patients.

The pseudopatients were admitted in 12 different hospitals located in five different states and only Rosenhan's identity was made known to the head psychologist and the hospital administrator (Rosenhan, 1973). All the other pseudopatients used aliases and concealed their true professions, although the details of circumstances and history remained unchanged. After being admitted, the patients abandoned all the behaviors that pointed towards abnormality. They engaged in all the activities required by the facility, and sometimes openly took notes that would help in the research.

Rosenhan (1973) also describes another experiment that was conducted at one particular hospital that had heard of Rosenhan's research and challenged the pseudopatients to be admitted in their facility, as they were positive the same mistakes could not be done. Findings The findings of the experiment were rather surprising, especially because none of the pseudopatients were detected as frauds.

In fact, in the initial hospitalizations, 35 patients were the ones who were able to detect that the pseudopatients were sane, some voicing their allegations openly and accusing them of being journalists and professors due to their note taking habits (Rosenhan, 1973). Their behaviors, albeit normal, were interpreted to be evidence of pathological disorders. For instance, the writing habits were translated to be proof of disturbance and they concluded that the pseudopatient caught writing indeed had schizophrenia.

The staff believed it was upon the pseudopatients to prove they were getting better, and they were forced to take more than 2100 medication tablets although they had no indications of being unwell. They were made to stay in the hospital for an average of 19 days and in this period, they observed that there was little to do in there but eat. One such incident was when one psychiatrist pointed to a group of patients that they were half an hour early for lunch.

He immediately concluded that that type of behavior was a sign of an oral acquisitive syndrome, completely ignoring the fact that the patients had nothing better they could have been doing. Rosenhan (1973) describes the experience in the hospitals as depersonalizing. They often felt powerless as they had no privacy and barely moved around. The second experiment had more astonishing results.

After Rosenhan supposedly sent the pseudopatients to the facility - out of a total of 183 patients, 41 were identified as potential pseudopatients, with 23 being monitored with suspicion by a psychiatrist and 19 by one psychiatrist and staff members. As it turns out, Rosenhan had not sent any patients to that hospital. Implications Both experiments and their findings confirm that the diagnostic process for mental disorders is not reliable (Rosenhan, 1973).

The first experiment clearly shows that both psychiatrists and the staff were not able to point out sane people from the group and in the second experiment; they could not identify the people that were actually insane. Psychiatrists, therefore, are not in a position to clearly differentiate people who have mental disorders from those who do not. Patients who are labeled as insane due to disorders like schizophrenia are also often unable to get rid of such a label, which greatly alters others' perception about them (Rosenhan, 1973).

Hospital employees completely forget to consider the environment the patients are in and how it may stimulate certain behavior, in the rush to blame every single reaction on the patient's disorder. This study also showed that physicians are more inclined to make a Type 2 error, where a healthy person is wrongly assumed to be sick, than a Type 1 error, where a sick person is deemed to be healthy (Rosenhan, 1973). Rosenhan's.