On Being Sane In Insane Places By D. L. Rosenhan

In the article “On Being Sane in Insane Places”, author D.L. Rosenhan recounts an experiment he conducted to test the consistency of psychiatric diagnoses. In this study, eight individuals were given the task of calling a psychiatric hospital and alledging that he or she had been hearing voices lately, specifically voices that were the same sex as the patient. No other differences in symptoms or history were made, besides minor altercations that would not influence diagnoseses, such as where the individual was employed. In the end, all were admitted into the different hospitals they called. Once inside the hospital, the patient did not continue to pretend to hear voices or possess any symptoms at all. Despite this, they were not suspected to not actually possess the schizophrenia diagnosis they had acquired. As time went on, many of the individuals became more antsy to leave the hospital and began taking notes on their experience right in front of the staff of the hospital. There were even events in which the staff misunderstood these individual’s activities, assuming them to be an aspect of their diagnosis rather than to be a consequence of the environment they were in. While many of the patients in the hospital recognized that the individuals involved in the experiment were not mentally ill, the staff never did. When finally released from the ward, each individual was given a label of schizophrenia “in remission”. There was no question on whether the patient had actually had the diagnosis in the first place. Rosenhan concludes the article by discussing the environment inside the hospital and the consequences of the diagnoses the individuals were given. …show more content…
He notes that while the individual’s stays varied from seven to fifty-two days, there was simply not enough time for staff to observe them thoroughly. Staff inside the hospital were also seen to not spend a great amount of time with the patients, only noting to emerge from their rooms thirteen times in an eight-hour shift on one occasion. On the occasions staff were seen, many participated in rituals that wounded or did not acknowledge the patients at all. From this, Rosenhan references a different study where patients and individuals were observed. The idea of the study was to understand how staff in each setting would treat individuals upon them asking questions, even if those questions did not have meaning. On college campuses, every participants’ questions were answered, while only four percent of patients were given the same courtesy. With this, Rosenhan displays the depersonalization and trauma patients face and the consequences of their diagnoses.
My immediate and continuous reaction to this study was the huge problem with mental health care. From the understaffing of hospitals to the way patients were often treated to how they were freely diagnosed, this study was shocking. This has given me reason to wonder how prominent those issues still are today. As the study was conducted almost forty years ago, there may have been major changes in health care. If so, I wonder how much did the publication of this study contribute to that, if at all. How much do we still need to change? However, the article also made me question how much of this study was a result of researcher bias. While psychiatrists should be held to high standards, I can understand that they are not implicitly questioning if a