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Being Sane in Insane Places

The person who has a sound, rational and healthy mind is known as sane person but if a person is mentally unhealthy is said to be an insane one. Psychiatry is a field which deals with the person who has some mental disorder or illness. But the question is how to identify a sane and insane person? It’s very interesting topic according to me that how psychiatrist use different methods to diagnose mental illness. This study is actually based on the experimental study of David Rosenhan who concluded that even a psychologist is unable to identify a sane person in an insane place. The result of his experiment was quite interesting for me because as a general perception we can’t consider that how a psychologist would fail to diagnose his patient. The strangest thing I found during the study of Rosenhan experiment was that doctor was unable to identify the healthy people but the patients at hospital had recognized that they are healthy and just collecting information for any research.

Hypothesis:

Which are the factors that make a person normal or insane or mentally retarded? We people normally said that we can easily tell that who is normal and who is not but it is difficult for a psychologist to diagnose a sane person in any insane place. Although it seems unbelievable but experimentally it has been proved. Deviant or odd behaviors determined that if someone is sane or insane. Though it seems very easy to recognize insane people but in actual it doesn’t. Moreover, it has also been observed that sanity or insanity is not universal as one thing which is not considered as abnormality in one culture may be insanity in another one. The main thing is the misuse of psychiatry at the workplace by psychiatrists.

Definitions:

“Psychology is a branch of study which deals with the mental health issues and the study of human mind.”

“Hypothesis is a statement that attempts to predict or to account for a set of phenomena.”

A sane person is one who faces the challenges of life, reality of everything and has a strong, healthy mind.

“An insane person is one which is mentally unfit, doesn’t accept the reality of life and also have no concern with the challenges of life.”

“Experiment is a controlled test of a hypothesis in which the researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another,”

Rosenhan’s Experiment:

Rosenhan made an experiment in order to test the validity of psychologist’s diagnoses. He was also a psychologist. So, for testing that a psychologist would be able to find out a sane person in an insane place he prepared a team of 8 persons consisting of five men and three women. They choose 12 different psychiatric hospitals for conducting experiment in different cities of United States. They all went to different hospitals as pseudo patients and provide false information about their names, profession but give them correct information about their daily works. They provide false personal information so they couldn’t identify that they are sane and are just came here to make an experiment. They got admitted in the hospital on the basis that they have hallucination problem and they really want to get rid of this problem.

But after getting admission in the hospital all the pseudo patients didn’t show any sign of hallucination and they started taking their observation. The pseudo patients noted all the observations on their note pads but the strange thing was that no nursing staff and even doctor notice it and take it as pathological action. Rosenhan said that he was wonder to know that the patients in the hospitals identified that they are doing some research but doctors were unable to diagnose it. But the question arise that why they were unable to detect the sane? All the pseudo patients acted normally in the hospital and didn’t show any symptom of hallucination but still they were forced to take ant psychiatric drugs. After their 19 days stay at hospital they released. All but one was diagnosed as Schizophrenia. This was a shocking condition because they all were mentally fit and had no mental illness.

After this experiment Rosenhan decided to make another experiment and for this he informed the hospital administration that he is going to sent a pseudo patient to the hospital but in reality he didn’t sent any pseudo patient. But he was shocked to see that about 41 patients were diagnosed as pseudo patients and 19 were suspicions according to the hospital’s staff. This was a shocking result because they all were real insane persons but as the staff had already information that they are going to admit a pseudo patient so their diagnoses’ was totally wrong. The psychiatrists need to learn more education so they would be able to identify who is sane between insane in an insane place.

Result:

So, I think this experiment shows that it’s really hard to find a sane in an insane place for a psychiatrist. But it also increases the danger of dehumanization. I think this is very important topic for further research as due to the mistake of any psychiatrist a sane will be labeled as insane. Moreover, there should be a brief research that why a psychiatrist can’t identify a sane in an insane place. In the first experiment the doctors were unable to detect the sanity between insanity while in the second experiment they were unable to detect insanity. How pity situation it is. Actually there is misuse of psychiatry. I choose this experiment for this study because it has the complete explanation that how doctors become unable to detect sane and insane persons. They really need to get more skills in their field as well as education because this situation leads towards dehumanization.

References:

“How do we Define Sanity and Insanity?” 27th March, 2010, retrieved from http://beyondthepsychiatricbox.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-do-we-define-sanity-and-insanity.html

“Rosenhan Experiment”, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTJe8GCmm2o

“On Being Sane in an Insane Places Psychology Essay”, Retrieved from http://www.ukessays.com/essays/psychology/on-being-sane-in-insane-places-psychology-essay.php