Identifying The Validity Of Psychiatric Diagnoses

Nearly a century later in 1975, American psychologist David Rosenhan published a paper called "On Being Sane in Insane Places" detailing the experiment that he conducted on psychiatric institutions themselves. The first part of his experiment involved sending pseudopatients (a group of eight totally mentally sound associates, including David himself) to knock on institution doors and falsely report that they 'd been hearing voices. Once admitted, the fake patients abandoned their fake symptoms and behaved as they normally did, waiting for administrators to recognize them as mentally healthy.

Describe the main types of mental ill health according to the psychiatric (DSM/ICD) classification system: mood disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, psychotic disorders, substance-related disorders, eating disorders, cognitive disorders?

A great deal of scientists looked greatly into this matter of cognitive malady, including Austrian neurologists Sigmund Freud and American physician and writer Silas Weir Mitchell. For example, in accordance to author Maria Helena Rowell’s “Hysteria” article, Freud began his research of mechanism that were involved in the treatment of hysteria during the end of the 19th century and developed a theory that

Explain the key strengths and limitations of the psychiatric classification system. Strengths of Psychiatric Classification and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders include that it provides a well designed standard, and comprehensive diagnostic tool for clinicians and it allows physicians to look at the complete psychological make-up of a person.

Before the world was more advance than our minds were and it was considered something normal people were treated and place into places that they shouldn’t have been. Things that we would consider normal today would be consider has an insane person. These insane asylums were admitting people that may not have been considered insane. In this essay D. L. Rosenhan explains his experiment that he had. He wanted to show the misdiagnosis of patients and how the effects of being labeled insane has on a person. The illness he choice to shed light on was schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is brain disorder in which people interpret reality differently than other people. Better understood has these people with schizophrenia see or do things that are outside

Lauren Slater’s, On Being Sane in Insane Places, takes the reader on a journey showing how psychiatry has changed since the 1970’s. David Rosenhan’s experiment of whether psychiatrists could accurately diagnose mental stability was the catalyst for her own experiment. Her quest to see if Rosenhan’s experiment can be duplicated, clearly shows her mental stability is questionable. I believe the psychiatrists in her experiment may have accurately diagnosed her.

Consequently, this stigma has become one of the major contributing factors that stop individuals from reaching out and seeking treatment. As mentioned by Henderson (2013), more than 70% of individuals worldwide do not receive treatment for their mental illness. The high rate of unreported mental illnesses therefore leads to an inaccurate representation of mental illness prevalent within society. Individuals are afraid to speak out and seek help for their illness due to the fear of being rejected and labeled by others. The stereotypes of a diagnosed individual represent the collectively agreed upon notions that the mentally ill can never return to a once regular lifestyle (Corrigan & Watson, 2002). With the avoidance of individuals accepting

As they were released, the majority were given the diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission, which according to Rosenhan (1973) meant that the staff did not suspect the pseudopatients were "sane". However, one question I had while reading this was why would the staff think the pseudopatients were faking? The pseudopatients checked themselves into the hospital, and the hospital's job is to help the patient. The pseudopatients were not actively diagnosed with schizophrenia, but they were "in remission" based on the symptoms Rosenhan (1973) had told them to display. Psychiatric diagnoses are complicated and there is not one perfect way that works, but one of the criteria is self-reported symptoms from the patient. If the pseudopatient originally described the symptoms he or she had, and they were similar to the symptoms schizophrenia, why would the staff question that? I can understand the criticism of the hospital not extensively fact-checking and testing the patients in the initial meeting; that probably should have been more standardized, and more testing should have been done before landing on one diagnosis and admitting them into the hospital. However, most of the psuedopatients were released in remission, meaning that they were exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia (i.e., when they first checked in), and now they are not (i.e., during their stay). This suggests that the staff did know the patients were no longer exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia, otherwise they may have not been released as quickly or released with a diagnosis of

In today’s society, the phenomenon of malingering is not being recognized as a mental illness, but rather an intentional faking of mental illness. Malingering had captured the attention of many forensic psychologists and is now a growing concern due to the potential consequences of misdiagnosis in clinical or correctional setting. Malingering defined as a deliberate act by a person pretending to have some form of physical or psychological symptoms in order to avoid a negative outcome such as a prison sentence, or to gain a positive outcome such as financial compensatory.

In the article On Being Sane in Insane Places, the problem is trying to figure out if sane people can be distinguished from the insane and what is or is not normal. This article talks about an experiment that was done to see if sane people were detected from the insane or not and how it was conducted. It states that “normality is distinct enough that it can be recognized wherever it occurs, for it is carried within a person.” This article will prove if this theory is correct or not and how the information for the answer was gathered.

“On Being Sane in Insane Places” was an experiment conducted by David Rosenhan, a professor of law and psychology at Stanford University. It was first published in the January 1973 issue of Science (Spitzer, 1976). The study consisted of two phases: a participant observation study and a secondary experiment.

When the psychologist was evaluating David, he asked him what his problem was. David simply said “I’m hearing a voice and its saying thud.” After the psychologist sat there for a while and tapped his pen, Rosenhan was finally led down a hallway to an exam room. He then said that he was fine and wanted to know when he will go home. The doctor’s just smiled at him and said “when you are well.” After the doctors took the vital signs of David, they sent him into a room where he would “take” his medication to make him sane. While he was in a room where all the patients gathered in, he saw a patient get severely punished for telling a nurse “I like you”. In today’s medicine, any diagnosis can be wrong because the doctor does not look at the huge picture of what is going on. Psychiatry needs to have more research developed. There has been a development since the beginning of the discovery of psychiatry. They started out with the shock treatment and now they have shrinks that people talk to try to get the voice out of their head. There still are insane asylums, but they are not like how they use to

Doctors will soon have it easy when diagnosing patients with depression. Scientists from the United Kingdom have developed a new method to specify the best drug to use for patients with the psychological disorder.

The Rosenhan experiment was an experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis, conducted by David Rosenhan in 1973. The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.

I agree with you completely. We cannot blame society for the choices that individuals make. As Beccaria stated, everyone has free-will. Most individuals are not forced to commit crimes; however, social pressures often influence their choices to make poor choices. I also agree with your examples of how stress can lead to psychological issues. Some individuals do not have the same determination and drive, so they do not know how to cope with their situations when things get tough. A lack of money and deprivation can influence someone to steal for their basic needs because they believe they have no other choice. Although, their circumstances are unfortunate, they should still be held accountable. I know that the government does not provide everything,