The
Rosenhan experiment is a study conducted in 1973 in order to examine the validity
of psychiatric diagnosis. Researcher David Rosenhan suspected that psychiatric
criteria applied in diagnosis are not as objective as believed but rather
context and personally determined.
In
order to test his hypothesis Rosenhan wanted to commit healthy people to mental
institutions and see how they are treated (hence the title of his article:
"On Being Sane in Insane Places"). His study included two experiments
testing unknowing real hospitals. In his first experiment Rosenhan sent healthy
people to fake psychiatric symptoms which disappeared after they were
hospitalized. These fake patients continued to be treated as abnormal though
they presented no symptoms and were in fact completely sane (for a detailed
account of the experiment see our summary of "On Being Sane in Insane Places" part 1).
After the results of the first experiment, the second Rosenhan experiment
informed institutions that fake patients will come to them within a given time
frame. Rosenhan asked the institutes to try and pick up on the impostors and
though a relatively high number of patients were suspected to be sane, Rosenhan
in fact never sent anyone (for a detailed account of the experiment see our summary of "On Being Sane in Insane Places" part 2).
What
the Rosenhan experiment shows is not only the unreliability of mental diagnosis
(and maybe medical diagnosis in general), but something much deeper. In his
article Rosenhan talks about the problem of "psychiatric labeling", a
phenomenon by which once someone is considered to be insane the way he is perceived
and treated by his surroundings will work to fulfill that prophecy. In the most
broader sense, the Rosenhan study demonstrates how once we have an initial
verdict on someone or something, everything we see from that point on will be
understood based on that initial judgment, be it misguided or not. Rosenhan's
experiment pushed forward the anti-psychiatry movement and the discourse on
psychiatric labeling, but its meaning and implications run much deeper.
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