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There is a long history of attempting to understand and classify abnormal behaviour. As has been previously stated, there is a lot of difficulty defining abnormality. In the 1960’s, a number of psychiatrists decided to come together and fiercely criticise the medical approach to abnormality. From this, the Anti-Psychiatry Movement was born. R.D. Laing and Rosenhan were supporters of this movement.
As a result of the Anti-Psychiatry Movement, Rosenhan set out to demonstrate just how unreliable psychiatric classification can be. He argued that ‘psychiatric diagnoses’ were in the mind of the observers. This led to his study, ‘Sane In Insane Places’.
Aim: To investigate whether psychiatrists were able to distinguish between people who are perceived to be ‘sane’ and those who are labelled as ‘insane’.
Procedure:
– The experiment itself was a field experiment.
– The Independent Variable (IV) was the symptoms of the patients.
– The Dependent Variable (DV) was the psychiatrics’ admission and diagnostic label of the ‘patient’
– It was a participant observation.
Eight patients (consisting of five men and three women) tried to gain admittance to 12 different hospitals in five different states in the USA. The following were comprised on a psychology student, three psychologists, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter, and a housewife. This included Rosenhan himself.
These pseudo-patients telephoned the hospital for an appointment, and arrived at the admissions office complaining they had been hearing voices. They said the voice, which was unclear and the same sex as themselves, said ‘hollow’, ‘thud’ and ’empty’. These symptoms were partly chosen as concerns arise about the meanings of the individual’s life.
After they had been admitted to the psychiatric ward, the pseudo-patients stopped simulating symptoms of abnormality. They then told staff they were fine and no longer experience symptoms.
Results:
None of the pseudo-patients were detected, and were all (bar one) admitted with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and were eventually discharged bearing the label ‘schizophrenia in remission’. They remained in hospital for 7 to 52 days (an average of 19 days each). Although they were not detected by staff, many of the patients suspected they were ‘sane’.
The pseudo-patients’ normal behaviours were often seen as aspects of their supposed illness. For example, nursing records for three of the pseudo-patients showed that their witing was seen as an aspect of their pathological behaviour. Rosenhan notes that their is enormous overlap in the behaviours of the ‘sane’ and the ‘insane’.
Psychiatrists and nurses made little contact with the patients, according to the participants. Powerlessness and depersonalisation were also experienced. It was estimated that the pseudo-patients were given a total of 2,100 tablets, though only two were swallowed.
There was a follow-up study conducted after this initial experiment by Rosenhan himself:
Rosenhan informed staff at a teaching hospital that sometime in the next three months, one or more pseudo-patients would attempt to be admitted. Each staff member was asked to rate patients presenting themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 to reflect the likelihood of them being the pseudo-patient.
Judgements were given on 193 patients admitted for psychiatric treatment. 41 were judged with high confidence by at least one staff member to be pseudo-patients, 23 were considered suspect by at least one psychiatrist, and 19 were thought to be pseudo-patients by one psychiatrist and another staff member. There were actually no genuine pseudo-patients involved in this study.
The conclusions that Rosenhan drew from both studies gave insight into the world of psychiatry and diagnosis. His argument was that individuals are not insane all of the time but, once a person is labelled ‘insane’, all their behaviour is understood through that label.
Sources:
– Brain, C. (2009). Edexcel A2 psychology. London: Philip Allan
that psychology blog 
