Rosenhan

Question 1

What was rosenhan’s aim in his study?

Answer 1

To investigate whether 8 sane individuals who gained access to 12 hospitals could be distinguished from insane.

Question 2

What was rosenhan’s procedure?

Answer 2

• 8 pseudo patient, 3 F, 5 M (including himself)
• gained admission to 12 hospitals across 5 USA states
• the words used were empty, thud, hollow
• all info they used was true just not their jobs
• once admitted, they acted normal and took notes of their experiences

Question 3

What were rosenhan’s results?

Answer 3

• 7 diagnosed with schizophrenia, 1 with manic depression with psychosis
• they remind in hospital for between 7 to 52 days (mean of 19)
• 35 out of 118 other patient voiced suspicions
• lack of monitoring, interaction, no privacy
• distortion of behaviour (normal behaviour voiced as weird)

Question 4

What were rosenhan’s conclusions?

Answer 4

Staff in psychiatric hospital unable to see who were sane and insane, therefore the DSM-5 is invalid to diagnose schizophrenia

Question 5

Generalisability of rosenhan

Answer 5

• gained access to large amount of hospitals so results are representative of wide range of hospitals
• however all hospitals were in the USA so results may not be generalisable to diagnose in other countries

Question 6

Reliability of rosenhan

Answer 6

• standardised procedure (all used same words for entry)

- 7/8 got a consistent diagnosis of schizophrenia, suggesting portrayal of symptoms was consistent

Question 7

Application of rosenhan

Answer 7

• results highlight poor validity and reliability as they reported to the hospital over the phone when they actually had nothing wrong with them
• results highlighted poor treatment from hospitals so this information could help to improve future patient treatment

Question 8

Validity of rosenhan

Answer 8

• fie experiment so high ecological validity
• pseudo patients made notes of their experiences whilst in the hospital so info may be subjective and influenced by anxiety and stress

Question 9

Ethical of rosenhan

Answer 9

• maintained confidentiality of the hospitals and patients
• hospital staff intentionally deceived so treatment was unethical
• this could lead to psychological harm for hospital staff as they may question their professional integrity
• hospital staff didn’t have the right withdrawal as they were unaware that the study was taken place
• researchers were treated unethically as they had to persuade to leave the hospital
• could be argued that the pseudo patients wasted valuable hospital time and resources however only received an average of 6.8 mins a day of hospitals attention