Frantically Sane

Frantically Sane

In the study " On Being Sane in Insane Places" Rosenhan the use of deception is shown when the psedopatients are coached on what to say to uses in order to fact a mental distress. They begin by lying about their symptoms and that they are ultimately hearing voices what fits a schizophrenic symptom. Rosenhan goes further by coaching their psedopatients in what to say, and tell them to take notes during the process. Doctors would rather make a type two error than make a type one error in other words they would rather diagnose a healthy patient sick than diagnosing a sick patient healthy. Rosenhan knows that the only diagnose for the symptom of hallucinations in the United States is schizophrenia. Therefor his research is unethical because the psedopatients were coached in how to act and what to say in order to deceive the doctors they would encounter in the hospitals. The doctors were fooled into believing the most apparent diagnosis -schizophrenia. The outcome proves Rosenhan's theory extremely clear and support his original findings, but it would not be approved today because is very unethical.

The study was made inside a psychiatric hospital and that may have influenced the diagnosis of the behavior, because the environment has an influence on the doctors, staff and patients. The use of deception inside those perimeters could have had an affect in the diagnosis of the psedopatients. The conduct of the research outside a psychiatric ward may have shown different outcomes if deception was not used since a hospital is a place of stress and where people seek treatment not lying, pretending a symptom like in this research. Deception should not be used inside hospitals since it could compromise credibility if the name of the hospital for whatever reason was exposed. Plus doctor inside that environment are more likely to diagnose in a sort period without much analysis.

The main reason why deception should not be used in the research or any psychological research is because it is dangerous not only to the psedopatients because that is always a possibility that something might go wrong and also the second part of his study originated when hospitals that were not part of the original experiment stated that these results found in the hospitals used in the study could not be attained at their hospital. Rosenhan said that he would have a psedopatients fake the same symptoms and try to get admitted to their hospital in the period of 3 months. In reality Rosenhan never send any psedopatients but those hospitals still reported that they spotted the psedopatients. First the use of deception is unethical and maybe even dangerous because the hospital staff could not provide treatment to someone who truly is suffering from a mental disease or are in real distress.

Without the use of deception we would never know that doctor are not very present and do not interact with their