Chapter 3: On Being Sane in Insane Places
Summary
This chapter is about a psychiatrist called David Rosenham and his experiment to determine if psychiatrists could identify the "sane" and the "insane". He was able to recruit eight people including himself to lie and get admitted into a mental institution. Once in the mental institution they were told to act normal. The "disorder" they faked was to say that they were hearing a voice, specifically a thud. A thud was not an identified symptom for hallucination, so all eight volunteers were admitted to various mental institutions all around the nation. This chapter describes some of Rosenham's findings and how other psychiatrists devoted papers to criticize his findings.
Discussion
I have got to admit that when I read the title of this chapter I did not think it made any sense, but I was mistaken and it cannot fit the chapter any better. I found interesting how Rosenham was able to find volunteers to fake their way in to mental institutions. Furthermore, it was even more interesting that he himself was part of his experiment. I think that his findings about the admission tests to mental institutions not being very effective raises a red flag. There may be able thousands of cases where people that are "sane" taken for granted and taken to mental institutions without even needing it.
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