Chapter 3
Summary
This chapter discusses David Rosenhan’s test in which he and eight friends when to various mental institutions, got admitted by saying they heard a voice that said “thud” and then acted normal once in the ward. He discusses how the staff attributed all of his normal behaviors to his paranoid schizophrenic diagnosis. Slater then tells of how people reacted to Rosenhan’s article about the matter. She also discusses the still prominent questions in regards to psychiatry and how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders evolved as a result of Rosenhan’s study. She also describes how she went and redid the study, and while she was not admitted to the institution, she was prescribed twenty-five antipsychotics and sixty antidepressants.
Discussion
This is one of my favorite chapters so far. I really feel that people are diagnosed with mental disorders and prescribed drugs way too soon. I remember in school having several classmates that had ADD, and in all honestly they acted less hyper on the days they forgot to take their pills or the days when they ran out of pills. I also think Lauren Slater was totally awesome for redoing the study, but I didn’t like reading about how she tried the Risperdal “in the spirit of experimentation.” What? Why are you taking this drug for symptoms you don’t have that is prescribed for someone that isn’t really you? One more thing to note: I thought it was very interesting that Rosenhan described the patients as seeming to know he was normal when the doctors did not.
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