"After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release."
I could believe, say one in five were "just mistakes". But all of them? Wow, that is damning evidence.
Alex said:
That is a good observation for engineering/debugging too. How many times do you latch onto a symptom, and let the evidence fit? Probably is true in legal and crime fighting. Part of it is prejudice where you see a behaviour that looks familiar, the other is a subconscious tendency to deny you many have been wrong in your first diagnosis.
Yes, well said.
I think that probably we all suffer from this in one area or another, I suspect it's part of the "dark side" of being a Human.
Great !!! Thanks for sharing this !!!
ReplyDeleteI am really wondering why I NEVER heard about this. Ok, I didn't study specifically psychology, but still... should be more known than this. Thanks for spreading the word !
Yes, it should be much more known.
ReplyDeleteThere is a subculture which is is continually working to expose the abuses of psychiatry, but it's not known about in the main population.
"Refusing to admit that you're mad is a classic sign in madness." The classic Catch-22. ):-P
ReplyDeleteNot just behing the Iron Curtain, my good friends...
But let me read that article before going on a blind rant. ;-)
And it was precisely this tendency to cling to a diagnosis — and interpreting all subsequent evidence in order to fit it — that lay at the heart of Rosenhan's criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.
ReplyDeleteThat is a good observation for engineering/debugging too. How many times do you latch onto a symptom, and let the evidence fit? Probably is true in legal and crime fighting. Part of it is prejudice where you see a behaviour that looks familiar, the other is a subconscious tendency to deny you many have been wrong in your first diagnosis.
Yes, well said.
ReplyDeleteI think that probably we all suffer from this in one area or another, I suspect it's part of the "dark side" of being a Human.