even the beautiful lose control
“You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel.”— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns (via naturaekos)
In a 1970s experiment, a Stanford psychologist and 7 other mentally healthy participants got themselves admitted to 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the US by pretending to hear voices. Once inside, they began acting normally, but all 12 hospitals diagnosed each of them with disorders, forced them to take drugs, and required them all to admit they had a disease before they could be released. Source Source 2
This was the study ‘being sane in insane places’ by David Rosenhan. The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not the staff of asylums could truly determine a person’s sanity after being admitted.
Rosenhan ans his colleagues did not pretend to hear voices, they pretended to hear a ‘hollow thud’- something with no basis in psychology. From the get go they were offering the doctors and nurses a chance to deny them entry, but despite the fact that the thing they were faking wasn’t even a real symptom, they were all admitted.
That very day, the moment of their admission, they went back to acting normal. They went about their day as normally as possible, and waited to see if the staff of each hospital they were in would notice. They stopped reporting hearing the noise that got them admitted.
The staff never noticed.
Some of the patients did.
Despite this, all of them were eventually released, but none were declared sane on release. Some were in the hospital for 2 weeks, one remained for over 50 days.
What the study proved was that it became impossible to establish sane from insane in the setting of a mental hospital. To retest, after Rosenhan came forward with his findings, he told asylums all over the nation that they’d be doing the experiment again, but with more participants this time. After a certain period, he would ask the head doctors of the ‘targeted’ asylums which patients they believed were faking it.
All of the hospitals reported at least one person.
No one was actually sent in.
This reiterated the original claim, proving for all that the perception of sanity is reliant on location and societal standards.
I’ve never liked this study nor the implications people tend to draw from it. I’ve read this. It sets so many dangerous precedents. Psychiatrists can’t actually look inside your head. Mental illness isn’t like marks on the skin, it doesn’t usually manifest that obviously visibly. The psychiatrists usually have to diagnose based on what the patient reports. The participants lied about their experiences, gave the doctors a textbook description of schizophrenia, and they were all released with diagnoses of ‘schizophrenia in remission’. Because just because someone isn’t ‘acting’ like they have a disorder doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Depressed people are still depressed if they’re happy or normal for a period of time. An epileptic is still epileptic when they’re not having a seizure.
The people being reported by the other hospitals as ‘faking it’ is exactly why drawing these ‘hurr durr SOCIETY is the insane one’ conclusions is a bad idea. Do you really want mental institutions actively looking for people who ‘aren’t acting insane enough’ and accusing them of faking it? Do you want people to be at risk of losing treatment they need?
Ok I have never looked at it that way. It’s a good perspective to think of. Like really good and I completely get it.
I always got the conclusion that once you say you have something, it sticks forever and how that can sometimes be a bad thing, but I never took it as severe as the study states it. I know that isn’t how studies work but that’s just how I took it because I also saw it as a bit off.
Yes, sometimes hospitals fuck up but like mama is saying, you can’t really just know someone is faking or being legit. There are things you just cannot account for. I honestly wasn’t shocked when the hospitals reported a fake patient after being told they would be sent a fake patient, it makes them nitpick more and question people more, and as you see, it ended up dismissing someone with a legitimate issue.
Holy fuck I love when people help me get why something doesn’t seem right to me.
