Rosenhan Case Study Reflection

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.

“At its heart, the question of whether the same can be distinguished from the insane (and whether degrees of insanity can be distinguished from each other) is a simple matter: Do the salient characteristics that lead to a diagnosis reside in the patients themselves or in the environment and context in which observers find them?” (Rosenhan 1)

On the note of the research question, Rosenhan sought to see if psychiatrists could detect “normal” people who were institutionalized as

In Chapter 3 of Opening Skinner’s Box, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Lauren Slater discusses the contentious issue psychiatrists faced in 1972 after psychologist David Rosenhan conducted his most famous experiment, proving how psychiatrists already label patients when they walk through the door to be evaluated. The author, Slater is a psychologist herself in which her writing in this chapter is supportive to Rosenhan’s findings. This may limit supporting arguments on crediting psychiatric conceptualization. The meaning of behavior can easily be misunderstood, a patient can be diagnosed according to the doctor’s capacity of knowledge to specific behaviors.

Mental illness becomes a bigger issue with a long lasting cultural stereotyped due to the manner in which it has long been labelled (Miles, 1988). Although mental illness is very much connected to instabilities in one’s mental health state, as previously mentioned, a person can be mentally healthy but still suffer from a mental illness. What is understood by mental illness is that it

- The original question of the study was: ‘If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?’ but Rosenhan narrowed it down in order to make it easier to answer and less of a philosophical debate. ‘Do the salient characteristics that lead to diagnoses reside in the patients themselves or in the environments and contexts in which observers find them?’ The question was narrowed down to patients, referring to those declared unwell in mind by medical institutions, and wonders whether diagnoses are made based on the patients themselves or preconceived societal notions and the unique living situation within the hospital.

The conditions of psychiatric hospitals were poorly maintained yet again. From the late 1800s until the mid-1900s, the conditions of these institutions were hit or miss. Despite the rising population of those in need of mental health treatment, conditions were deteriorating across the board. This pushed in the deinstitutionalization movement (Nevid, Rathus, & Green, 2014). This was a push to remove patients from state-run hospitals into a more community-based treatment center. In most cases today, there are treatment plans in place depending upon the severity of the disorder an individual may be suffering from. It’s more about treating an individual with any variety of modern techniques or therapies and trying to reintegrate them into society rather than a lifelong stay in an institution. Deinstitutionalization didn’t work the way it was intended. After it was put into place there was a rise in the homeless population and different programs that were supposed to be put into place didn’t live up to

In this paper, I will challenge the criteria of “dangerousness” in the DSM-5 definition of mental disorder for two main reasons. The first is that this focus has led to the further stigmatization of mental illness, making people with serious mental illness less likely to seek treatment. Second, this focus on dangerousness also hurts the “less dangerous” mentally ill, as they often do not receive adequate help even if they are extremely distressed and dysfunctional.

In today’s society, mental hospitals are still a potential solution for the mentally ill, but they are seeing a steady decline in incoming patients. Although there is still a need for the mentally ill to be admitted to mental institutions such as hospitals, the reality is that the heightened cost of treatment deters many potential patients. Instead, the mentally

Kroska, A. Harkness, S.K. (2008). Exploring the role of diagnosis in the modified labeling theory of mental illness. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71, 193-208

In the text “Who’s Crazy Here, Anyway?,” the author presents how in a study by David Rosenhan, hypothesized if mental health professionals could tell the difference between someone who was mentally ill and someone who was mentally healthy. The reason for this experiment was to see how these doctors and psychiatrists judged and diagnosed patients when describing of having some sort of characteristic of a mental illness and seeing if they truly could tell if they were mentally unstable. Rosenhan proposed that if these doctors and psychiatrists had enough training and knowledge then they would be able to recognize a mentally healthy person from a person who actually had a mental disorder.

In the Article “On Being Sane In Insane Places,” Rosenhan describes an experiment were eight mentally sane individuals enter 12 different hospitals. The objective of the study was to see how

experience often produces two very different scenarios. This is often true due to myths and

Chapter 3 During the Middle Ages some “authorities” classified abnormal behaviors into two groups, those that resulted from demonic possession and those due to natural causes. The 19th-century German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin was the first modern theorist to develop a comprehensive model of classification based on the distinctive features, or symptoms, associated with abnormal behavior patterns (see Chapter 1). The most commonly used classification system today is largely an outgrowth and extension of Kraepelin’s work: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association. Why is it important to classify abnormal behavior? For one thing, classification is the core of science. Without labeling and organizing patterns of abnormal behavior, researchers could not communicate their findings to one another, and progress toward understanding these disorders would come to a halt. Moreover, important decisions are made on the basis of classification. Certain psychological disorders respond better to one therapy than another or to one drug than another.