On Being Sane In Insane Places Analysis

In the article ‘Who’s Crazy Here, Anyway?’, Rosenhan’s reason for research was because Rosenhan doubted whether the characteristics that lead to psychological diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the situations and contexts in which the observers find the patients. The hypothesis generated by Rosenhan was, that the staff will recognize the sanity of the patients, question their diagnosis and follow to release them. The objective was to observe whether personal or environmental factors dictate mental health diagnosis and professional treatment. Rosenhan recruited eight subjects which consisted of three women and five men, one graduate student, three psychologists, one pediatrician, one psychiatrist, one painter, and one homemaker.

Diagnosing an individual with a mental illness balances on a fine line between giving a life-long label and misdiagnosing. Mental illness is best viewed on a continuum allowing for a varying degree of severity. In the field, mental health professionals are faced with determining what signifies the appropriateness of diagnosing a mental illness. A professional’s judgment is impacted by their personal perceptions and observations, societies views and norms, and the patient’s history. The film, “How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity” demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing those who are mentally ill from those seen as healthy ( ). I will explore my reactions and thoughts regarding the participants’ experience as well as the mental health professionals. Additionally, I will share how this information is applicable to my future career in the field of social work.

The short documentary Crooked Beauty, directed by Ken Paul Rosenthal, narrates Jacks Ashley McNamara’s experience in a psychiatric ward and how her time in the facility shapes her new appreciation for her mental illness. One controversial issue has been trying to identify the true cause of mental illness. On the one hand, most people may think mental illness is simply a biological disorder that can be cured with a combination of medication and doctors demanding appropriate behavior until it sticks in the patient’s mind. On the other, McNamara contends that mental illness is a misconception with a patient’s oversensitivity, where it is harder for the patient to ignore certain events than “normal” people, and their doctor’s textbook knowledge. In McNamara’s mental institution, the psychiatrists simply trap her in a padded room and prescribe many different pills to suppress her mental illness instead of embracing her differences or showing her how to use those differences to her advantage. In attempt to prevent those who are mentally ill from feeling the same anger and frustration she felt, she demands a change in the line psychiatric treatment when she says:

The dangerous and suicidal patients were tied together with ropes to help isolate them from the rest (ch. 14). The nurses were very obnoxious and abusive. For example, they would tell the patients to shut up and that they would beat them if they talked (Bly, ch. 12). Throughout Bly’s experience she talked with other patients, which convinced her that some were as sane as she was. Ultimately, society could not determine who was actually insane or sane due to their lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.

Members of society feel at peace knowing that their mentally disturbed are receiving ‘proper’ treatment, but when treatment entails electroshock therapy and lobotomies, how does one protest when they are unaware of this malpractice? In the 1960s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the lives of psychiatric ward members are changed forever when introduced to Randall McMurphy. While he claims to be insane, what separates him from the others are the means of comitance; Randall pleaded insanity to avoid a difficult jail sentence while the others more or less committed themselves. His confidence is a never before seen attribute in the ward that inspires the other patients to break out of their comfort zone to not only speak up for themselves against the overbearing head Nurse, but to embrace their masculinity and take power of their own lives. In Ken Kesey’s fiction novel, patients in a psychiatric ward are under the cruel regiment of Nurse Ratched when the introduction of new patient Randall McMurphy challenges her control to revealing themes of conformity, technological influence, and confidence.

For centuries societies have been superstitious and afraid towards mental illness; mainly due to a lack of knowledge. While there were “cures and treatments” for individuals that were deemed insane many were sent to either prisons or asylums. The conditions of these facilities were unsanitary, the physical and sexual abuse was frequent, and the staff was not properly trained to care for patients. Patients were also chained, caged, or restrained to beds in rooms that were often unheated.

In Opening Skinner’s Box, Lauren Slater explores psychology’s most controversial experiments with her own distinct style. Her third chapter, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” adds an unique layer to her novel by examining Rosenhan’s experiment. In Rosenhan’s experiment, he sent eight pseudopatients to different mental institutions, each complaining of one nonexistent psychological issue—a voice in their head saying ‘thud’. All eight of the psuedopatients were locked up for at least seven days, most being diagnosed as schizophrenic, even though they acted completely sane after being admitted (Slater 63). Slater, fascinated by Rosenhan’s experiment, set out to replicate it herself.

Rosenhan’s experiment shows readers that the stigma associated with mental illness have a significant impact on the way patients are treated by doctors. In the experiment, Rosenhan and several other “pseudo patients" intentionally tried to get themselves admitted to mental hospitals in several states claiming to be suffering from schizophrenia. They were easily admitted, and once they got inside the hospital they stop showing any abnormal behaviors. Rosenhan’s plan was to show normal behavior once they got in the hospital to see if the doctors would notice and release them. To his surprise, normal behaviors were interpreted by hospital staff as being part of being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Amongst the buzz about Doctor Strange and Captain America 3, Marvel also announced the movie debut of a long-running but recently rebooted character by the name of Carol Danvers. Up until recently, Carol Danvers went by the name of Ms. Marvel and sported a skin-tight black leotard for a costume. However, in 2012 a writer named Kelly Sue DeConnick gave the character an updated look with a full body suit and a new name. Alex Abad-Santos uses Carol Danver’s history and her evolution into Captain Marvel in his essay “The Insane, Sexist History and Feminist Triumphs of Captain Marvel” to discuss the way women are portrayed in comics and how comic books reflect American society. Santos uses quotes from authors, provides panels from issues of Captain/Ms.

They say mental hospitals are for the insane not the sane, however who gets to decide who is insane and who is sane? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, explores the idea of what it means to be sane or insane, and who gets to define what qualifies as sane versus insane. The story takes place during the 1950's in Oregon. Many of the patients on the ward are not necessarily insane however just do not fit in with society’s perception of “sane” and have admitted themselves into the mental health hospital as an escape from society. Society and the mental hospital in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are not too different, for example the committed patients represent those who society has found as a threat to society by not fitting into the norms.

The images about the conditions in Willowbrook are very disturbing to me. It is hard to look at how they treated people with disabilities so poorly and horribly. This treatment, however, reminds me of a research that I have read before. As psychologist Rosenhan conducted a research to see whether the asylum were able to distinguish the healthy people from those with mental illness, he found that the patients in the asylum were treated poorly by the staffs. In his paper On Being in Sane in Insane Places, Rosenhan recorded that there were very minimal interaction between the staffs and the patients, as if they were afraid of the patients.

Being detained can make you angry. As well as your anxiety, this is, of course, a symptom of your mental disorder.” (Smith, 2003) After reading those parts in the chapter and article it makes me think how often do insane patients go unnoticed or are diagnosed incorrectly because they feel ignored and causes other emotions to run

Rosehan’s study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of psychiatric diagnosis and pseudopatients. He was interested in seeing if the psychiatric diagnoses appointed to a patient, could be tested experimentally. He then set up an experimental study using researchers as the “fake patients.”

The ability to fool psychiatric diagnostic tests is quite simple as seen with David Rosenhan’s experiment. Rosenhan’s experiment begins with his doubts about humans’ ability to tell “normal from the abnormal” (Rosenhan). This lead to Rosenhan setting up eight “sane” people as “pseudopatients” who acted to have psychotic episodes at twelve different psychiatric hospitals (Thirunavukarasu). These psychotic episodes consisted of hearing voices and noises. The eight patients fabricated the lie, making these auditory hallucinations-considered signs of schizophrenia-more authentic by connecting the lie to personal memories and situations in their life (Rosenhan). Each pseudopatient gained admittance into a psychiatric hospital; seven patients received a diagnosis of schizophrenia

One lesson we have learned is that when a person is labeled then they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When Rosenhan was in the institution he was labeled with schizophrenia, after that everything that he did was part of his condition. When he wrote in his journal or even his everyday habits became a part of his diagnosis. This showed that the “…label of madness beget madness, so that the diagnosis sculpts the brain” (Slater, pg. 69). I chose this lesson as an important one because it helps to explain not only biases in the mental health field, but biases in everyday life. Another important lesson we learned is the inhumanity in asylums. We learned how once people came for help they gave up their humanity. We learned that the patients were treated as if they were invisible. Rosenhan writes that the nurses would come in and unbutton their shirts to fix their bras. He saw patients who were beaten and severely punished for just saying that they liked a nurse. He also wrote how people were held there, unable to leave, even if they asked to. His experiment exposed the inhumanity in asylums and showed that even the best mental institutions treated their patients with heartlessness. I chose this lesson because it is a lesson that we have learned. When the author of the book, Lauren Slater, tried this experiment she noted how she was treated with much respect. She was given water, offered food, and treated