rosenhan

• Rosanhan aim

  To investigate if sane people could mistakenly be diagnosed as having a mental illness
• rosenhan procedure

  He asked 8 pseudo-patients to attend a hospital complaining about hearing voices by repeating a single word (thud, empty or hollow). They all successfully gained admission into different hospitals around the US. Once in, they started to behave normally and asked to be released - it took them between 7-52 day and were diagnosed as SZs in remission.
• rosenhan findings

  •7/8 were diagnosed with SZ even though they didn’t have it

  •Real patients in the hospital repeatedly said that the pseudo-patients were exactly that

  •In the follow up study – 40 patients were recorded as potential pseudo-patients, but none were actually sent out
• 1.What do the research findings in rosanhan study suggest about reliability?

  •High inter-rater as all psychiatrists diagnosed pseudo-patients with SZ – so they all arrived at the same conclusions given the account of symptoms presented
• What do the research findings in rosanhan study suggest about validity?

  •If psychiatrists can’t tell apart real from pseudo patients with SZ, then this does not represent something that is real and distinct. Therefore, the classification systems does not measure what it claims to measure which is different disorders that are real and distinct from each other.