Rosenhan

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

• Rosenhan wanted to test the reliability of mental health diagnosis and to see if medical professional could tell the mentally ill from the healthy

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

• There were 8 pseudo patient, 3 women and 5 men from various professions including psychologists, a housewife and paediatrician
• They were not mentally ill that would pretend to experience schizophrenic symptoms, they said they heard hollow ‘thuds’ and ‘voices’
• The pseudo patients communicated with 12 psychiatric hospitals in the USA, both in the East and West Coast
  The hospitals varied in funding and staffing, even included a private hospital
• The pseudo patients were admitted into hospitals and were instructed to act normally, taking notes regarding their experience and following instructions of the hospital staff
• The pseudo patients had to behave in a way to convince the hospital that they were not mentally ill before being discharged

Question 3

Finding

Answer 3

• Every single hospital diagnosed the patients with a mental disorder, 11 of those diagnosed with schizophrenia
• The length of hospitalization ranged from 7 to 52 days, average of 19 days
• None of the staff were able to identify the patients faking their symptoms, but many legitimate patients were easily able to identify
• In 4 of 12 hospitals, no staff answered the patients questions, found that 71% of doctors and 88% nurses ignored the patients with asking questions
• Qualitative findings were that 3 normal behaviours were misinterpreted as ‘abnormal’ such as note writing being interpreted by the nurse as ‘engaging in writing behaviour’ and pacing up and down was seen as a sign of ‘nervousness’, however this was done because the patients were bored

Question 4

Follow Up Study

Answer 4

• Every staff member who dealt with admission had to rate all the patients in terms of probability that they were pseudo patients
• In 3 months, 193 patients were admitted to hospital and the staff had to rate them on a scale of 1-10 of how likely they are to be fake
• 41 of those considered to be fake by 1 staff member
• 19 of those considered to be fake by 2 staff members
• However, Rosenhan didn’t send a single pseudo patient, confirming his initial results about diagnoses being invalid to be correct

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

• The results demonstrated that medical professional cannot reliably differentiate between those who were mentally ill and those who weren’t