Are we crazy or do we make ourselves crazy.
By Jazmine Brown
CCAC Alleghany Campus
Psychology 101-AC08 Dr. Mest
What's the difference between being psychically ill or being mentally ill? The big difference is the appearance, the way you present yourself, and multiple tests that can prove you are really physically hurt or injured. Being in the jurisdiction of Doctors may leave you feeling vulnerable. When they mention anything that could be wrong you agree and nod your head, because of their a doctor right they're the one with a Ph.D.; right? Around 1 in 20 adults or 12 million Americans gets misdiagnosed a year. The main misdiagnosed would be cancer, heart attacks , depression, and strokes. These diseases are no joke to just abruptly make assumptions towards the patient with it. They're massive amounts of stories talking about the fallacious movement of illnesses. In this paper, I going to approach the experiment that David Rosenhan did in the 1970s called being sane in insane places, and two articles about over-diagnosing in the 21st century.
David Rosenhan was a Stanford professor emeritus of psychology and law. He was a tall bald boxy man, who loved having lavish parties. He married a woman named Molly. They both had two kids together one boy Jack, and Nina. Molly ended up dying because of lung cancer. Nina also passed away one year later, but in a car crash in England. David's heart couldn’t take so much grief that he constantly had strokes. Later on in life, David had also had an accident that put him in the hospital. He was in his house when all of a sudden he felt numbness throughout his legs. By the time he arrived at the hospital in the emergency room his legs, arms, torso, and lastly his lungs shut down. He was paralyzed from the neck down and was put onto a breathing machine. 1972 David decided to reach out to an eight different people ranging from a psychologist, one graduate student, a painter, psychiatrist, a pediatrician, and a housewife. They all agreed to perform this magic trick upon several individual mental institutions. Putting their life and body on the line for science. He wanted to pursue this to “test whether their actual skills were on par with their power.” The all-time goal was to reveal if the psychiatrists would find out about their real sanity. The pseudopatients were to answer completely honest, then once inside the ward act totally normal. Rosenhan went to an asylum a hundred miles away from home to Pennsylvania. When asked what was wrong with them they all said they heard a voice saying one-word “thud”. All the psychiatrist were very confused about the word they heard so they admitted them into the wards. Rosenhan vitals, temp, and pulse all came back normal, in fact, he was normal. Anyway, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was kept for a few days. Rosenhan would “take” the pills prescribed by hiding it under his tongue and running to the washroom right af...
