The Sane Doing Insane Things Rosenhan Summary

The Sane Doing Insane Things Have you ever wondered what it was like in a mental hospital? If you could, would you pose as a patient to get admitted? In 1970 a man by the name of David Rosenhan did exactly that. Rosenhan wanted to determine if psychiatrists could tell the “Sane” from “Insane” apart (Slater 63.) Rosenhan and eight of his cohorts observed how Psychiatrists treated them during their stay. He came to the conclusion that the psychiatrist could not distinguish the “Sane” from “Insane”; therefor they were not properly diagnosing their patients. Psychiatrists during the 1970’s were being bombarded with a copious amount of shell-shocked soldiers causing them to be dependent on the diagnosis of PTSD and schizophrenia causing them to …show more content…
It seemed like a majority of patients were given that diagnosis, even if they truly were not. This led Rosenhan to do his experiment on psychiatrists in mental hospitals. After his stay in the hospital he was diagnosed with his disease in remission. Rosenhan found that the psychiatrists were improperly diagnosing patients most likely because they did not truly know what was going on with there patients and it was easier to give them a basic diagnosis such as disease in remission so it wouldn’t seem as if they really had no clue. It’s possible that at that time psychiatrist were feeling a bit overwhelmed with mass influx of patients coming to them that it was easier to diagnose them all with the same diagnosis and hospitalize them. That technique could lead to bigger problems. If a perfectly sane person with mild depression was placed into a mental hospital then they have a greater risk of becoming insane themselves due to the long exposure to that environment. That environment can’t be good for anyone’s state of mind. It saddens me to think that a majority of the patients in those hospitals were being misdiagnosed and weren’t being given the proper treatment to help them