Deviant Behavior & Soc Contrl
ADHD – In your own opinion, what do you think about ADHD as a condition? Based on the article, how do you feel about its use in schools? Who makes the ultimate decision on if a child has ADHD and if they can return to class? How so you feel about this? How does this represent labeling, stigma, and medicalization?
Insane Places – What was your reaction to the article? How do you feel about the way the study was conducted? What disorder did they say they had? What were its symptoms? What surprised you? What did not surprise you? Do you feel this study would be the same if conducted today? How does this reflect labeling, stigma, and medicalization?
On Being Sane in Insane Places
David Rosenhan, a psychologist and a University professor, published a journal article that turned out shocking to the world of psychiatry. The author produced the article ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ after carrying out a study in which eight individuals without mental sickness were admitted to psychiatric institutions. The author’s main intention was to discover whether mental health professionals could separate between people with mental illness and those who are psychologically unwell. After reading the article, I find the more significant portion of the investigation true where ‘pseudopatients’ were misdiagnosed (Ruscio, 2015). The study was conducted effectively, with much time to psychiatrists to complete their examinations adequately. There was a uniform failure to acknowledge sanity, and the hospitals’ quality cannot contribute to this. Nor can this misconduct not be alleged on lack of enough time to evaluate the ‘pseudopatients.’ The timeframe for hospitalization ranged from 7 to 52 days, with an average of 19days.
In this case study, it is not surprising that wrong diagnoses of mentally ill patients happen because physicians at times operate with an active bias towards what the statisticians call the type 2 mistake (Bartels & Peters, 2017). This means that they are more inclined to call a healthy individual sick which is a false positive that a sick person healthy. Psychiatric diagnoses have been mostly linked with personal, social, and legal stigmas. It was thus appropriate to find out whether the actions of diagnosing the sane insane could be reversed. Such errors could be avoided in the current psychiatric surrounding because the world has evolved with new medical machines emerging that would stop such mistakes from happening. Modern psychiatrists are thoroughly vetted before actual deployment to provide mental treatments to patients. This poorly reflects on the labelling, stigma, and medicalization.
References
Bartels, J. M., & Peters, D. (2017). Coverage of Rosenhan’s “On being sane in insane places” in abnormal psychology textbooks. Teaching of Psychology, 44(2), 169-173.
Ruscio, J. (2015). Rosenhan pseudopatient study. The encyclopedia of clinical psychology, 2496-2499.
