Poppy Shakespeare

A study by American Psychologist Rosenhan "On being sane in insane places" demonstrated that psychiatrists cannot reliably distinguish between people with a genuine mental illness and people pretending to have one. Rosenhan sent accomplices to Hospitals, all with the instruction that they complain of one symptom, hearing the word "Thump". All were institutionalized and labeled as being sufferers of a variety of conditions "in remission" upon their discharge. There was much fury from the psychiatric establishment when these results were made public. One psychiatrist challenged Rosenhan to send accomplices again, confident that he could spot them. Rosenhan agreed, and some time later the psychiatrist proudly contacted Rosenhan in the belief that he had found them all, to which Rosenhan responded that he hadn't sent a single one that time. Rosenhans' term for persons in a situation of being mistaken for insane was "pseudopatient"and the subtext of his study is that any social faux pas, intentional or not, could be misinterpreted as a psychiatric symptom by a psychiatrist.

References BBC Play of the Month: St. Joan (1968)