Key Research: Rosenhan On being sane in insane places Flashcards
What did Rosenhan want to find out?
Rosenhan wanted to see if it was possible to tell the difference between sanity and insanity in a person, and whether hospitals really could tell the difference between sane and insane.
Outline the method of Rosenhan’s study.
-8 Pseudopatients (people pretending to be mentally ill) tried to gain access to 12 hospitals in 5 different states in the USA.
What would the Pseudopatients do to try and gain access to the hospitals?
They would call up the hospital and ask for an appointment and would pretend to be suffering from symptoms, complaining that they had been hearing voices. These voices were unclear but were saying ‘empty’, ‘hollow’, and ‘thud’.
What did the Pseudopatients do once admitted to the hospitals?
They immediately acted normally with no mention of the symptoms again (spoke and behaved as they normally would), and they made notes on what happened.
Who were the participants in Rosenhan’s experiment?
The participants were the people in the hosiptial - the other patients and the staff.
What are the main results of the study?
- Each pseudopatient (except one) was admitted with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and released with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission.
- They were never detected as being fake
- Time spent in hospital ranged from 7 to 52 days
What did Rosenhan do in his second study to test if it was just as likely to make a type 1 error and misdiagnose a sick person healthy?
- Rosenhan informed staff at a hospital that during the next 3 months, 1 or more pseudopatients would attempt to be admitted into their hospital
- Staff members were asked to rate on a scale of 1-10 (1 = high confidence) each patient, as to the likelihood of them being a pseudopatient
What did Rosenhan find from his second experiment?
- During the 3 month period 193 patients were admitted
- At least one member of staff rated 41 patients as highly confident they were a pseudopatient
- 23 were rated highly confident they were a pseudopatient by at least one psychiatrist
- 19 were rated highly confident they were a pseudopatient by a psychiatrist plus one member of staff
- NONE of them were pseudopatients
What are the conclusions from the results of Rosenhan’s second experiment?
It is just as easy to judge a sick person as healthy as it is to judge a healthy person as sick
Suggests massive errors can be made in diagnosis
Outline the experience of Psychiatric Hosipitalism
- Staff and patients segregated
- Staff tended to only come out to administer medication or therapy, attend a patient conference or to instruct of tell off a patient
- Staff avoided patients like they were contagious
What was the average amount of time spent by attendants out of the work room as a percentage?
11.3% of their shift was spent out of the work room with patients
What was found to do with ‘stickiness’ of labels from Rosenhan’s experiment? Give an example of the effect of the label.
-It was found that the label the patients were given affected how things were interpreted (for example one patient said his relationship with his wife was close and warm with occasional angry exchanges, and this was interpreted as ‘His attempts to control emotionality with his wife and children are puntuated by angry outbursts’)
What did the staff think when the patients made notes?
Staff though this was an aspect of their pathological behaviour - continuous writing must be a behavioural manifestation of their disorder. This is a result of the stickiness of labels.
What was found to do with powerlessness in the hospitals?
- Patients had no power to influence the interactions with medical staff and could be punished verbally and physically by staff
- Patients lost many legal rights - often monitored during bath and toilet times
What was found to do with depersonalisation in the hospitals?
- Main concern was lack of time patients spent with their medical staff
- Medication seen as enough, so personal contact not seen as necessary
