Notes on: Rosenhan, D. L. (1973) "On being sane in insane places"; Science; 179, 250‐258.

Introduction
Sanity, insanity, normal and abnormal depend on the culture
The insanity diagnosis depends on the patient or on their environment?
This article is about an experiment when 8 sane people checked themselves to
hospitals to see if they were discovered to be sane
Varied ages, five women
The author was part of the experiment
The staff didn't know they were not insane
The normal are not detectably sane
All patients claimed to hear voices (that was the only lie they said) After that,
they behave normally
All of them were hospitalized from 7 to 52 days and discharged as schizophrenics on
remission
All of them were immediately admitted and diagnosed with schizophrenia
Everything they did or said was interpreted in light of their diagnosis
The staff never recognized normality, but the patients were not easily fooled:
they kept accusing the pseudopatient to be a journalist or a professor (which
they were!)
When -in other experiment- the staff was warned that they should discover a
pseudopatient, they started to see sane people all over the place! (And then it
turned out that none of the members of the study checked themselves during
that period)
The experience of psychiatric hospitalization
People are always in "cages"
Physicians and psychiatrists were most the time unavailable
Powerlessness and despersonalization
Where there was abuse, it was OK in front of other patients, but it was hidden to
the other staff. It is because patients are not reliable witnesses.
Staff talk and behave as though the patients weren't there
They didn't even notice that most of the patients didn't swallow their
medication!
The consequences of labeling and despersonalization
The failures of the staff is not because they are incompetent, but because they
were immerse in an environment that made them fail
Only the private hospital gave a slightly less morbid diagnosis to the
pseudopatient: manic-depressive
 

 
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