Rosenhan

• Aim:

  • To see if the sane can be distinguished from the insane
  • To be admitted to psychiatric wards as a patient to get more understanding of patients psychiatric experiences institutionalised 
• Sample:

  Pseudo patients:

  • 8 pseudo patients
  • 1 graduate student in 20s, (remaining were older and more established) 3 psychologists, a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife.
  • 3 women, 5 men 
• Hospitals

  • similarly varied setting to generalise finding.
  • 12 hospitals in sample located in 5 different states in east and west coast
  • Some new some old and shabby
  • Some had good staff/ patient ratio, some understaffed
  • Only one strictly private private hospital others were supported by state or federal funds in one instance university funds
• Procedure 1

  Admission

  • after making appointment via phone pseudo patient arrived complaining about hearing voices, claimed that voices were unclear saying words like “empty” “hollow” and “thud” voices were unfamiliar and same sex as the pseudo patients. 
  • Choice of symptoms was determined by a single report of existential psychosis in literature.
• Procedure

  • Beyond alleging symptoms and fake name, vocation and employment no further alterations of persons history or circumstances were made. 
  • Significant events of the pseudo patients life history were accurate of how they actually occurred. Frustrations and upsets were described as they were along with joys and satisfactions
• After admission

  • Immediately after admission pseudo patients stopped showing any symptoms of abnormality in some cases of mild anxiety due to the expectation that getting admitted would be more of a procedure 
  • They shared fear of being found out and exposed, fears of what would happen on psychiatric wards 
  • Pseudo patients spoke to staff as he would normally and attempted to engage other in conversation due to lack of activity on ward
  • Pseudo patients responded to questioning about how they were feeling by staff as fine and no longer experiencing symptoms, responded to requests for medication
• Results 

  Aim 1 could pseudo patients be detected ??

  • diagnosis with 12 admissions: 11 schizophrenics, 1 manic depressive psychosis 
  • Real patients who suspected sanity 35/118
  • Time to be released 7-52 (19 days average)
  • Mini experiment: 4% of pseudo patients received answer from psychiatrist 0.5 received answers from nurse in comparison to 78% of comparison study
• Procedure 2 : follow up experiment 

  • doubted such error to occur staff were informed that at some time during 3 moths one or more pseudo patients would attempt to be admitted into hospital 
  • Each staff member was asked to rate each patient who presented themselves the likeliness of being a pseudo patient 10 point scale 1 being high confidence of pseudo patient