David
Rosenhan, a professor emeritus at Stanford, (…) in 1973 got himself and seven
other completely healthy friends admitted to the mental wards of hospitals
across the United States. The point of
his experiment was to question the validity of psychiatric diagnosis – but they
hadn’t expected it to be so easy.
Rosenhan and his colleagues each phoned a hospital complaining of
hearing voices. The rest of their medical
history and any other life stories were all true. All eight were admitted – seven were
diagnosed with schizophrenia, one with manic-depressive psychosis. As soon as they entered the hospital they
said their hallucinations had disappeared.
It was then up to each individual to convince the staff to discharge – a
task that took between seven and fifty-two days.
(from Unthinkable by Helen Thomson)
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