Rosenhan experiment

 

Hello friends,

Today while I was watching random videos on YouTube, I came across a video called Rosenhan experiment.

It was an experiment that conducted the accuracy of psychiatric diagnoses.

This experiment was conducted by a psychologist David Rosenhon, a Stanford University professor.

Rosenhan's study had two parts.

The first part involved the use of healthy pseudo-patients - three women and five men, Rosenhan was one of them -. They said they had hallucinations and heard weird noises. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and they were sent to the hospitals. 

After admission, they said they were okay, and they didn’t hear any noises anymore. To release, all the patients were forced to admit to having a mental illness and had to agree to take antipsychotic medication. They stayed at the hospital between 19-58 days. Except for one, the others all were diagnosed with schizophrenia before their release. 

The second part of his research involved the hospital administration, challenging Rosenhan to send fake patients to its facility, and its staff asserted that they would be able to spot fake patients. Rosenhan agreed that in the following weeks, 41 of the 193 new patients were identified as potential fake patients, and 19 of them were suspected by at least one psychiatrist and another staff member. Rosenhan said he had not sent fake patients to the hospital.

 Rosenhan believed that the experiment was a way to test the reliability of psychiatric diagnostic methods. 

The study concluded "it is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labelling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities that concentrated on specific problems and behaviours rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities.

I think this is an important experiment and it has affected psychology studies a lot.