1. https://sci-hub.red/10.1038/d41586-019-03268-y
2. https://www.npr.org/2019/11/13/777172316/the-great-pretender...
The Rosenhan Experiment: On Being Sane in Insane Places - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45785783 - Nov 2025 (1 comment)
On Being Sane in Insane Places (1973) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32686098 - Sept 2022 (2 comments)
David Rosenhan’s fraudulent Thud experiment set back psychiatry for decades - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22155529 - Jan 2020 (119 comments)
Troubling discrepancies in Rosenhan's “On Being Sane in Insane Places”? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21437852 - Nov 2019 (16 comments)
On being sane in insane places - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885181 - Jan 2016 (1 comment)
On being sane in insane places - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4371212 - Aug 2012 (2 comments)
Rosenhan experiment (1973) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1469370 - June 2010 (2 comments)
SIGECAPS is an acronym taught in US medicine for the diagnosis of major depressive disorder: Sleep disturbance, Interest loss, Guilt, Energy loss, Concentration loss, Appetite changes, Psychomotor agitation, Suicidality. And must have Depressed mood or Anhedonia (inability to enjoy things previously enjoyable).
The history of the SIG E CAPS acronym is also interesting, I've heard it was short for SIG (old shorthand for "to be prescribed") Energy CAPsules.
It doesn't really matter how "objective" your standard is if you're still relying on individuals to try to "address" whatever the patient is reporting. People still form a negative opinion and label you really quickly no matter how hard the profession fights that perception.
Our child also got stuck in the canal during birth and there was a good 30 seconds where the midwife from the hospital was trying to encourage to doctor who was to step in to let here keep trying, my kid came out white and took the longest 30-60 seconds to take their first breath. Never experienced so much dunning-kurger all at once. I had read a few week before that about medical professionals talking about how ominous a quiet birth it and was just zoned out as that was exactly what happened and I could sense all the tension. Then people from children services start demanding umbilical cord because my fiance had failed for MJ on her first prenatal vist, she quit smoking as soon as we knew and never failed a test after wards. But it all felt like an extreme lack of compassion. Then I was ostracised because I didnt want to cut the cord while I just thought my kid was dead and these social workers are trying to insert themselves in the process and its all chaos for no reason. The only good thing was a nurse pretty much told them to fuck off and wait in a nice but check yourself kinda way.
But multiple times people cared about their own ego, or their perceived power than actually attempt to do a compassionate job.
For the most part, you care the most about your circle, so if that isn't representative of the whole of society, it sounds like somebody else's problem. Who said all research needed to be perfect.
The chapter on 'Thud' ended with her visiting a psychiatric hospital of good reputation with an emergency room, she basically said the same things as the researchers in the paper. She was given some anti-psychotics and sent away.
But that confirms the main point of the experiment, which was that people who didn't need psychiatric treatment were given it anyway.
It's only of secondary importance that the prescribed treatment changed from hospitalization in 1973 to drugs in 2004. The primary point is that there was no objective way to determine who genuinely needed treatment. She didn't, but was diagnosed anyway.
This objection is so obvious that she must have addressed it in the book. Do you remember if she did?
> HERE’S WHAT’S DIFFERENT: I was not admitted. This is a very significant difference. No one even thought about admitting me. I was mislabeled but not locked up. Here’s another thing that’s different: every single medical professional was nice to me. Rosenhan and his confederates felt diminished by their diagnoses; I, for whatever reason, was treated with palpable kindness.
Seems she would disagree with your assessment that being prescribed some likely-harmless pills is the same as losing your freedom.
There's also a section earlier where she presents an argument the actual finding of the study is that mental healthcare is not set up to handle adversarial or dishonest patients, which is still a problem and a tough one to solve.
>Mr. Wright said the hospital later apologized to him and gave him a $50 gift card for a restaurant. The crisis center also apologized and gave him a $25 Walmart gift card.
That alone would be enough to drive me clinically insane
In the hospital environment, power is partly conveyed by the clothes people where and if you do not conform or obey, then you are punished. It is a pattern we are conditioned into from nursery/kindergarten onwards.
Authority provides the illusion of a sense of control, predictability, certainty and orderliness, and it's like we gravitate toward that even when it leads to bad outcomes for us.
For most of us the fear of being out of control seems to be greater than the fear of being controlled.
I remember reading an essay explaining that patients not sharing the political beliefs of the physician running the asylum are more likely to be classified as mentally ill. A mental asylum paid by state money is usually going to be in the hand of physicians who never see anything wrong with the state (not biting the hand that feeds you and all that): so when for example a libertarian arrives, he's much more likely to be classified as mentally ill than if a socialist arrives.
So it's all arbitrary and, moreover, you better put the odds on your side by trying to determine what are the physicians' political beliefs and pretend you have the same ; )
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46860103.)