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Rosenhan - Coggle Diagram
Rosenhan
Aim:
- To find out whether health professionals could distinguish between those who are genuinely mentally ill and those who are not
Procedure:
- Took place in 12 psychiatric hospitals that varied in size and location across 12 states
- Combination of a field experiment and a participant observation
- Each pseudo patient had to call up the hospital, claiming to be hearing unfamiliar, same sex voices (auditory hallucinations)- words like, empty, thud, hollow
- 7 pseudopatients were then admitted to hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, one with a diagnosis of manic depression with psychosis
- Pseudopatients then acted normally when in the hospital, and did not admit anymore symptoms
- Pseudo patents observed behaviour of the staff and tried to interview rhyme and record responses
- There was then a follow up study in another hospital, Rosenhan told them there would be 3 pseuodpatients sent within the month and they had to figure out which ones were not actually sufferers, but none were actually sent
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Results:
- Pseudopatietns were hospitalised between 7-52 days (19 days on average)
- No doctors or nurses questioned their genuine, although genuine patients did question them, believing some to be journalists
- 71% of doctors and 88% of nurses ignored the pseudopatients when questioned
- Three 'normal' behaviours were misinterpreted as 'abnormal', including note taking being intrepetted as 'engaging in writing behaviour' and an aspect of mental disorder
- Follow up study showed that out of 193 cases, 41 were identified as being fake and 23 were suspected to be fake
Conclusions:
- Mental health professionals cannot distinguish between real and false patients and were willing to make a diagnosis based on one false symptom
- 'Normal' behaviour was misinterpreted as 'abnormal' to support their idea that pseudopatients were unwell
- Validity of psychatric diagnoses was low, consistency of diagnoses were not reliable
Strengths:
- Gneralsibile as had a large sample of psychologists, nurses in different hospitals
- However, one took place in USA so is ethnocentric
- High ecological validity as it takes place in realistic setting
Weakness:
- Deceptive as hospitals, nurses and atheists did not know but the study, only managers who were not directly involved, goes against BPS
- Did not use standardised procedures, rater one participant revealed that they were wanting to become a psychologist