Rosenhan - On being sane in insane places Flashcards
What diagnosing system was used by psychiatrists at the time of Rosenhan’s study?
• DSM-II
What were the 2 aims of Rosenhan’s study?
- To test the system used by psychiatrists in order to establish if they were able to tell a sane person from an insane one.
- To observe and report on the experience of being a patient in a psychiatric hospital.
What was the method and design of Rosenhan’s study?
• A field experiment using covert participant observation.
What were the subjects in Rosenhan’s study?
• The staff and patients of 12 psychiatric wards across the USA.
How was a representative sample achieved in Rosenhan’s study?
- Hospitals were selected from 5 coasts on both the west and east coast.
- New and old hospitals were both selected.
- Some had good Staff:Patient ratios, some didn’t.
- 11 state funded, 1 private.
Who were the pseudo patients from Rosenhan’s study?
- Eight sane people, one of which being Rosenhan himself.
* Three professional psychologists, a painter, a housewife, a graduate student, a paediatrician and a psychiatrist.
What was the procedure for the pseudopatients?
- Patients rang the hospital for an appointment complaining of hearing an unfamiliar voice in their head of the same sex saying “Empty, hollow, thud”.
- Any other information was completely honest about their life apart from their name which was faked to protect their health records.
- Words chosen as they indicated an existence crisis.
- After being admitted patients acted completely normally as they usually wood.
- This was achieved AFTER the initial nervousness of being admitted so easily and fear of being discovered and embarrassed so quickly.
How many of the participants and what were they admitted to the hospitals in Rosenhan’s study for?
- All 12 hospitals were admitted to.
- 11 with schizophrenia, 1 with manic-depressive psychosis.
- Interesting that the manic-depressive psychosis (which was considered more likely to recover from) was the diagnosis of the only private hospital in the study.
What was the follow up study performed by Rosenhan and how many patients were the number of patients caught and identified by at least one member of staff?
- Challenged a large hospital to spot his pseudopatients coming in for treatment.
- 193 in total applied, with 41 being identified.
- But… He didn’t send any. They diagnosed real patients as fake.
What did Rosenhan explain about the issue of falsely diagnosing mental illness?
- That when someone is misdiagnosed they are stuck with a ‘sticky label’.
- The fact they are labelled as schizophrenic in remission causes social stigmas to be attached to them for life.
What were 3 of the behaviours perceived as part of the pseudopatients illness in Rosenhan’s study?
- Pseudopatients note taking behaviour was described by nurses as a ‘symptom of their illness’.
- When one pseudopatient was caught pacing the long corridor a nurse asked him if he was nervous, when he was in fact bored from having an unstimulating environment.
- While waiting in line for the canteen, one doctor described their waiting behaviour as the ‘oral-acquisitive nature of their syndrome’.
How long on average did each pseudopatient spend with senior members of staff such as a doctor per day?
• On average less than seven minutes a day.
What statistic can you give for the number of times a nurse responded to Rosenhan’s study’s questions of being released or a staff meeting?
• 47 out of 1283 times were responded to.
