{"id":580,"date":"2004-02-01T16:17:27","date_gmt":"2004-02-02T00:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/02\/01\/thud-thud-thud-into-the-cuckoos-nest\/"},"modified":"2004-02-01T16:17:27","modified_gmt":"2004-02-02T00:17:27","slug":"thud-thud-thud-into-the-cuckoos-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=580","title":{"rendered":"Thud, thud, thud: Into the Cuckoo's Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

A very entertaining Guardian <\/i>article <\/a>describes a 1970s experiment in fooling the psychiatric establishment:<\/p>\n

In 1972, David Rosenhan, a newly minted psychologist with a joint degree in law, called eight friends and said something like, “Are you busy next month? Would you have time to fake your way into a mental hospital and see what happens?”<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, so the story goes, all eight were not busy the next month, and all eight – three psychologists, one graduate student, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife – agreed to take the time to try this treacherous trick, along with Rosenhan himself, who could hardly wait to get started. Pseudopatient Martin Seligman says, “David just called me up and said, ‘Are you busy next October?’ “and I said, ‘Of course I’m busy next October’, but by the end of the conversation he had me laughing and saying yes.”<\/p>\n

First, there was training. Rosenhan instructed his confederates very, very carefully. Five days prior to the chosen date, they were to stop shaving, showering and brushing their teeth. And then they were, on the appointed date, to disperse to different parts of the country, east to west, and present themselves at various psychiatric emergency rooms. Some of the hospitals Rosenhan had chosen were posh and built of white brick; others were state-run gigs with urine- scented corridors and graffiti-scratched walls. The pseudopatients were to present themselves and say words along these lines: “I am hearing a voice. It is saying thud.” Rosenhan specifically chose this complaint because nowhere in psychiatric literature are there any reports of any person hearing a voice that contains such obvious cartoon angst.<\/p>\n

Upon further questioning, the eight pseudopatients were to answer honestly, save for name and occupation. They were to feign no other symptoms. Once on the ward, if admitted, they were immediately to say that the voice had disappeared and that they now felt fine.<\/p><\/div>\n

The article’s author, psychologist Lauren Slater, decides to repeat the experiment in 2004. There are several differences – the doctors and hospital workers are far more humane nowadays, and where they once locked people up irresponsibly they now drug people irresponsibly.<\/p>\n

It’s a little fun, going into ERs and playing this game, so over the next eight days I do it eight more times, nearly the number of admissions Rosenhan arranged. Each time, I am denied admission, but, strangely enough, most times I am given a diagnosis of depression with psychotic features, even though, I am now sure, after a thorough self- inventory and the solicited opinions of my friends and my physician brother, I am really not depressed. (As an aside, but an important one, a psychotic depression is never mild; in the DSM, it is listed in the severe category, accompanied by gross and unmistakable motor and intellectual impairments.)<\/p>\n

I am prescribed a total of 25 antipsychotics and 60 antidepressants. At no point does an interview last longer than 12 and a half minutes, although at most places I needed to wait an average of two and a half hours in the waiting room. No one ever asks me, beyond a cursory religious-orientation question, about my cultural background; no one asks me if the voice is of the same gender as I; no one gives me a full mental status exam, which includes more detailed and easily administered tests to indicate the gross disorganisation of thinking that almost always accompanies psychosis. Everyone, however, takes my pulse. <\/p><\/div>\n

There’s a lot more to Slater’s account – read the whole thing<\/a>, is my rather cliched advice. The article is taken from her about-to-be-released book Opening Skinner’s Box<\/i>, <\/a>which I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A very entertaining Guardian article describes a 1970s experiment in fooling the psychiatric establishment: In 1972, David Rosenhan, a newly minted psychologist with a joint degree in law, called eight friends and said something like, “Are you busy next month? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}