![]() ![]() Rosenhan’s message was devastating: “We cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals,” adding, “If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?” These findings, taken at face value, were very difficult to refute. While patients suspected study participants were fake-possibly because they spent their time writing notes-the staff did not. The statistics from the study showed contact with doctors averaged just 6.8 minutes a day 71% of doctors averted their heads when addressed. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia in remission. The pseudopatients were in the hospital for a mean of 19 days. The intention was to examine psychiatric diagnosis: was it scientifically valid or merely a random, subjective, and erratic process? 1 The author, Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan, described a unique experiment: Eight volunteer “pseudopatients” presented at psychiatric hospitals under fake names, complaining they heard voices. ![]() In 1973 the psychiatric profession was deeply shaken by a paper published in Science that purported to show that psychiatric diagnosis was effectively useless. ![]() By Susannah Cahalan New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2019ĭr Kaplan is Clinical Associate Professor, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Wollongong, Australia. ![]()
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