Rosenhan- Classic Study

• What was the aim of Rosenhan’s Classic Study?

  To test the hypothesis that psychiatrists cannot reliably tell the difference between people who are sane and people who are insane
• What type of experiment was it?

  A field experiment
• What are pseudo patients?

  Fake patients who kept a written record of the ward during the study
• How many pseudo patients did Rosenhan use?

  8 sane people

  3 women, 5 men
• What was the first thing the pseudo patients had to do?

  Call the hospitals for an appointments and arrived at admissions offices complaining that they were hearing voices
• What did they say they heard?

  “empty, hollow, thud”
• After they were admitted to the hospital, what did the pseudo patients do?

  stopped showing symptoms of schizophrenia
• What was the sample of hospitals in the main study?

  12 hospitals

  USA

  Public and private
• How many of the pseudo patients were admitted to the hospitals?

  All of them
• How many pseudo patients in the main study were diagnosed with Sz.?

  7/8
• What was the average of days they spent in the hospitals in the main study?

  19 days
• After the first study, what did Rosenhan conclude?

  Hospitals could not reliably tell the difference between sane and insane people
• Why did Rosenhan conduct a 2nd study?

  The hospitals complained they were deceived and it was not fair
• What were the hospitals asked to rate each new patient on?

  The likelihood of them being a pseudo patient.
• How many pseudo patients did Rosenhan send over 3 months?

  0
• How many patients were judged by 1 staff member and a psychiatrist to have been pseudo patients?

  19/193
• Give 2 weaknesses of the study

  1.Generalisability- only used 12 hospitals in the USA which is a very large place

  2.Ethics- used pseudo patients which took place that real patients could have used- and he deceived the hospitals twice.
• Give 2 strengths of the study

  1.Reliability- got the same results from each hospital

  2.Usefullness- led to the developments in the DSM and mental health hospitals