Sane Or Insane, Insane

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.

“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)

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.

Holden Caulfield is an insane person in a sane world. What is insanity? Insanity is when you’re in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior or social interaction. This state is mental illness. Insanity is when you do things in deranged or outrageous ways that could frighten people, or make people feel uncomfortable when around you. It’s when you do things out of the ordinary; yet feel as if they are ordinary. Insanity could come about when you’re depressed, or after a traumatic event, and sometimes even by keeping all your feelings bottled up inside of yourself. Sane people are sensible, reliable, well-adjusted and practice sound judgment. It’s behavior that is expected in a society. By these

- 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.

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.

John Buchanan referred himself to the local psychiatric facility in Lyon, Mississippi for psychotherapy. The patient is a male, Caucasian at the age of 28. Upon first arrival, Mr. Buchanan had cuts along a clean-shaven chin, a flask in his hands, and was dressed in a white button-up shirt, neatly pressed brown slacks, and black Oxfords. He was wobbly while entering the room, although he answered all questions clearly and with conscious thought. Mr. Buchanan academic record shows that he attended medical school at John Hopkins University and graduated this past summer with exceptionally well grades. He studied anatomy, medicine, and other fields of science such as biology, psychology, and chemistry. He is a certified doctor in Glorious

The patients were in for 7-52 days with the average being 19. This made Rosenham and his team wonder how many people admitted to these institutions are actually sane and could they have been misdiagnosed. Due to the stigma that is associated with mental illness, when someone is seen as mentally ill, everything they do may be interpreted as symptomatic of their disorder. These experiments illustrate how tricky diagnosing a mental illness can be. These experiments illustrate how tricky diagnosing a mental illness can

Mike writes about how some psychiatrists can’t determine whether a patient has a mental illness and is insane or whether they are sane. Mike says, “I recall a psychiatrist and philosopher telling me that the sanest people she met where those who believed themselves to be insane and that conversely, the most mentally unwell were the ones who insisted that they were

When it comes to judging cases in the legal system, things get tricky due to the imbalance between psychology and law. Psychology acknowledges that disorders have degrees; however, the law uses the method of sane or insane. Due to this, “not guilty by reason of insanity” is used and one the most famous cases we see this in is the case of Andrea Yates. In my essay, I will explain the basics related to her case and my personal opinion on this case.

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 yellow wallpaper is about a woman who is sick or at least she thinks so and is told by her husband to stay in her bed and rest, which eventually causes her to go insane. She begins seeing something within the yellow wallpaper. At first she isn’t sure, but after days of staring she discovers a woman inside of the wallpaper. The binaries at work in this piece are light and dark or sane and insane. The main character is sane at first but as time passes she gets sicker and crazier. She loses touch with reality and begins to see things that aren’t there. The woman she sees in the yellow wallpaper isn’t really there, but her mind makes her think she is. She sees this woman trying to get out of the wallpaper, but she can’t. The woman finally escaping

According to Ronson and Rosenhan, there is a question of whether sane individuals can be distinguished from insane individuals. They suggest that psychotherapists are too quick to label someone with a psychiatric disorder and in numerous cases they miss the mark. An inaccurate diagnosis of a mental disorder may cause a person to receive treatment they do not need, and possibly not receive the treatment that they do need. This causes countless problems for the patient, including difficulty acquiring a job, legal, personal, and social stigmas. Worse yet, Rosenhan (1973) said, “Having once been labeled schizophrenic there is nothing the pseudopatient [patient] can do to overcome the tag”.

Lauren Slater wrote in chapter three about David Rosenhan , studied on putting sane people into mental hospitals by faking their insanity. In the 1970’s, Rosenhan decided to study how the psychiatrist differentiates the “sane” from the “insane”. To begin his experiment, he asked eight others to join this experiment to answer his question due between the “sane” and “insane”. The participants were inculcated to say that they kept hearing a voice saying "thud". The interval of days that they approximately stayed, at minimum, in the hospitals, was nineteen days and the determined stay was fifty-two days. The experiment showed that the patients in the facility saw that the “insane” patient was sane as the psychiatrists think otherwise. The

The diagnostic process for personality disorders currently covers a broad scope of various tests and symptoms, causing a source of frustration for psychiatrists (Aldhous). The symptoms and side effects of several personality disorders can tend to blur together, making diagnosis challenging (Aldhous). Most psychiatric patients are diagnosed with several personality disorders at once, with twenty percent of people with personality disorders simply diagnosed with a “personality disorder not otherwise specified” (Aldhous). Using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, commonly referred to as the DSM, psychiatrists attempt with great difficulty to categorize their patients into a specific disorder, only to diagnose