Tag: anti psychiatry

green-217:

did-you-kno:

In a 1970s experiment, a Stanford
psychologist and 7 other mentally
healthy participants got themselves
admitted to 12 different psychiatric
hospitals across the US by pretending
to hear voices. Once inside, they began
acting normally, but all 12 hospitals
diagnosed each of them with disorders,
forced them to take drugs, and required
them all to admit they had a disease
before they could be released. Source Source 2

This was the study ‘being sane in insane places’ by David Rosenhan. The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not the staff of asylums could truly determine a person’s sanity after being admitted.

Rosenhan ans his colleagues did not pretend to hear voices, they pretended to hear a ‘hollow thud’- something with no basis in psychology. From the get go they were offering the doctors and nurses a chance to deny them entry, but despite the fact that the thing they were faking wasn’t even a real symptom, they were all admitted.

That very day, the moment of their admission, they went back to acting normal. They went about their day as normally as possible, and waited to see if the staff of each hospital they were in would notice. They stopped reporting hearing the noise that got them admitted.

The staff never noticed.

Some of the patients did.

Despite this, all of them were eventually released, but none were declared sane on release. Some were in the hospital for 2 weeks, one remained for over 50 days.

What the study proved was that it became impossible to establish sane from insane in the setting of a mental hospital. To retest, after Rosenhan came forward with his findings, he told asylums all over the nation that they’d be doing the experiment again, but with more participants this time. After a certain period, he would ask the head doctors of the ‘targeted’ asylums which patients they believed were faking it.

All of the hospitals reported at least one person.

No one was actually sent in.

This reiterated the original claim, proving for all that the perception of sanity is reliant on location and societal standards.

epicene-street-light:

last night i woke up at like 3am, thought “psych wards patients are like cats who are shut in the bathroom for being naughty”, and immediately went back to sleep

to add a bit more detail (hi @corasticot ) my ideas were:

– neurotypicals send you to psychiatric hospitals because youre a “threat” to yourself or the others but really, theyre tired of your bullshit. no owner seriously thinks shutting their cat away in the bathroom will make them understand why they shouldnt make a mess in the kitchen. at most they hope they figure it out and get too scared of the bathroom to do it ever again. no person will think in good faith that locking up a depressed/anxious/psychotic person will do anything else than scaring them to make them conceal their symptoms (im not talking expensive private clinics. some ppl have good experiences with them. im talking horrific state psychiatric hospitals where literally every “freak” get sent. youve got old ppl with dementia and a young adult with autism and depressed ppl and schizophrenic ppl in the same building like no big deal. with no therapy whatsoever)

– psychiatric hospitals look like big ass bathrooms, tiles floors everywhere, sanitizer, and white, no comfort

– naughty-cats-that-get-locked-in-bathrooms typically lament and yell behind the door until you free them. my psychiatric hospitals neighbors did that too and i was almost ready to do it too: you need attention from your owners/medical staff because youre lost and trapped

– btw, you get “locked up” in a psych ward like naughty cats 

– you’re super bored bc there is literally no enrichment/no activities. you’re ripped off all your possessions (they took my hairband and books away)

– you often dont know why youre there in the first place. do you think the cat that made a mess in the kitchen 5 hours ago knows why hes locked up in the bathroom? neither do most patients

thanks for coming to my ted talk and lets burn psychiatric institutions to the ground comrades