About the lecture

In this lecture, we review Rosenhan’s 1973 paper ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’, focusing in particular on: (i) the procedure and outcomes of the paper, which explored the validity of psychiatric diagnoses by inserting healthy pseudo patients into a psychiatric ward; (ii) the patients initial reports of hearing voices saying particular words without reporting any abnormalities once admitted and behaving entirely normally while on site; (iii) the fact that, despite participants not having a history of psychopathology and behaving entirely normally, all but one were discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission (a false positive diagnosis); (iv) the phenomenon that, despite remaining undetected by doctors, the pseudo patients were suspected by 35% of other patients, and exploring the reasons why this might have occurred; (v) one of Rosenhan’s follow-up studies, further exploring the opposite effect, whereby the medical staff were led to believe there might be pseudo patients, whereas in fact there were not.

Glossary:

False Positive in Mental Health – Diagnosing a healthy person with a mental disorder.

False Negative in Mental Health – Failing to recognise the presence of a mental disorder in a sick person, therefore assessing a person who is sick to be healthy.

Glossary:

False Positive in Mental Health – Diagnosing a healthy person with a mental disorder.

False Negative in Mental Health – Failing to recognise the presence of a mental disorder in a sick person, therefore assessing a person who is sick to be healthy.

About the lecturer

Dr Jude Stevenson is a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Glasgow, with a primary focus on mental health and well-being. Dr Stevenson’s research centres around body focused repetitive behaviours and is a UK ambassador for the TLC Foundation for Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours. Some of Dr Stevenson’s recent publications include 'Social media peer support groups for obsessive-compulsive and related disorders: understanding the predictors of negative experiences' (2021) and 'Pathogen disgust predicts stigmatization of individuals with mental health conditions' (2020).