On Being Sane in Insane Places
Rosenhan, D. L. Science 179, 250−258 (1973).
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/179/4070/250
… the patients often recognized normality
… may be due to the fact that physicians operate with a strong bias toward what statisticians call the Type 2 error. This is to say that physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick (a false positive, Type 2) than a sick person healthy (a false negative, Type 1). The reasons for this are not hard to find: it is clearly more dangerous to misdiagnose illnesss than health.
…The tag profoundly colors others’ perceptions of him and his behavior.
There is an enormous overlap in the behaviors of the sane and the insane. The sane are not “sane” all of the time. We lose our tempers “for no good reason.” We are occasionally depressed or anxious, again for no good reason. And we may find it difficult to get along with one or another person–again for no reason that we can specify.
I may hallucinate because I am sleeping … These are termed sleep-induced hallucinations, or dreams
There is by now a host of evidence that attitudes toward the mentally ill are characterized by fear, hostility, suspicion and dread.
At times, depersonalization reached such proportions that pseudopatients had the sense that they were invisible, or at least unworthy of account.
A diagnosis of cancer that has been found to be in error is cause for celebration.
But psychiatric diagnoses are rarely found to be in error.
Wikipedia entry:
Rosenhan experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
related:
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (Salvador Dali).
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n11/fig_tab/nrn2716_F1.html