# How is the Rosenhan experiment viewed in modern psychiatry? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 10, 2012, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070 "2012-08-10T10:48:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/1 "2012-08-10T10:48:20Z")
> **[Rosenhan experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment)** > > The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment regarding the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given antipsychotic medication. The study was arranged by psychologist David Rosenhan, a Stanford University professor, and published by the journ... > [@](#): > > Rosenhan’s study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or “pseudopatients” (three women and five men) who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The second part involved an offended hospital challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 193 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least 1 psychiatrist and 1 other staff member. In fact Rosenhan had sent no-one to the hospital. > > The study concluded, “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals” and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities which concentrated on specific problems and behaviors rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities. > [@](#): > > Despite constantly and openly taking extensive notes on the behavior of the staff and other patients, none of the pseudopatients were identified as impostors by the hospital staff, although many of the other psychiatric patients seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors. In the first three hospitalizations, 35 of the total of 118 patients expressed a suspicion that the pseudopatients were sane, with some suggesting that the patients were researchers or journalists investigating the hospital. > > Hospital notes indicated that staff interpreted much of the pseudopatients’ behavior in terms of mental illness. For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as “writing behavior” and considered it pathological. The patients’ normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology. > > The pseudopatients were required to get out of the hospital on their own by getting the hospital to release them, though a lawyer was retained to be on call for emergencies when it became clear that the pseudopatients would not ever be voluntarily released on short notice. Once admitted and diagnosed, the pseudopatients were not able to obtain their release until they agreed with the psychiatrists that they were mentally ill and began taking antipsychotic medications, which they flushed down the toilet. No staff member noticed that the pseudopatients were flushing their medication down the toilets and did not report patients doing this. > > Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of dehumanization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. Their possessions were searched randomly, and they were sometimes observed while using the toilet. They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients, often discussing patients at length in their presence as though they were not there, and avoiding direct interaction with patients except as strictly necessary to perform official duties. Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present. A group of bored patients waiting outside the cafeteria for lunch early were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing “oral-acquisitive” psychiatric symptoms I find it very interesting as relates to bias and the pathologizing of everyday behaviour(the pseudopatients note taking being seen as a symptom). Also interesting is the idea that what you are diagnosed with depends on the hospital and doctors you see. And since this study was done a LOT has changed, but certainly pathologizing everyday behaviour has accelerated to the point psychologist Christopher Moeller can say not having a facebook account is the sign of a psychopath. How does modern psychology view these experiments? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/2 "2012-08-10T19:16:28Z")
Definitely, I’d like an update on this too! Funny thing: I swear to Og, when that experiment was controversially in the news in the first place, I thought it was done by Zimbardo! From all that I can tell, psychiatric or psychological diagnoses are a crapshoot. The tendency is to just give some very knee-jerk broad-brush diagnosis. Like, you get a 15-minute interview, then you’re labeled as (a) “depressed” or (b) “anxiety disorder” or © “OCD” or (d) all of the above. and then they start throwing pills at you until one of them either (a) cures you or (b) kills you whichever comes first. If you are seriously enough disturbed that you need to be taken in for “observation”, the “common knowledge” is that you dare not express annoyance at this, as it will only confirm your pathological inability to manage anger. Or something like that. Not that I have any experience quite like that (yet). Some years ago I realized, in retrospect, that I had come very close to having that experience. Can somebody chime in here with some ignorance-fighting? Is there anything to the popular horror stories like this? Or have I just been re-reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest a little too much? But, to stick to the topic: Yes, I’d like to see some update on Rosenhan too. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/3 "2012-08-10T19:23:23Z")
If it were Zimbardo, he’d make sure to let everyone know about how groundbreaking it is. If modern psychiatric drugs kill you, then you need to decrease intake by 1000%. I’ve never heard of this and it sounds interesting. I don’t know if this instituted any changes in psychiatry. The fact that it took some months to get out and they had to lie is frightening. I think “Kafkaesque” would be appropriate. Criticisms I would make for it are: it’s not a true experiment. There are no experimental conditions (like send fakers and real schizophrenics in), and it probably has many confounds if it were experimental. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/4 "2012-08-10T19:47:41Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > Criticisms I would make for it are: it’s not a true experiment. There are no experimental conditions (like send fakers and real schizophrenics in), and it probably has many confounds if it were experimental. Well, the facilities were presumably admitting real patients (probably including schizophrenics) at the same time as the fakes. While not precisely a control group, that does provide some baseline to compare the treatment of the fakes against. I agree that the results are disturbing, if not terribly surprising. ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/5 "2012-08-10T19:58:43Z")
This is a plot point in an episode of _Lou Grant_. Rossi (played by Robert Walden) is investigating the treatment of patients at a psychiatric hospital. He is admitted and disappears while the rest of the newsroom staff try to find him. They find him in the psych hospital, stoned on drugs. When they go through his desk, they find a note about Rosenhan’s study. I think you can find the episode on Hulu; it’s where I saw it. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/6 "2012-08-10T20:00:29Z")
> [@MsRobyn](#): > > This is a plot point in an episode of _Lou Grant_. I thought I was the only one that remembered that. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/7 "2012-08-10T20:11:43Z")
> [@Balance](#): > > Well, the facilities were presumably admitting real patients (probably including schizophrenics) at the same time as the fakes. While not precisely a control group, that does provide some baseline to compare the treatment of the fakes against. Yeah, but who would share that information? Were the “patients” hanging around the front desk? And although much less likely, how would they know if some of the people not involved were fakes? ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/8 "2012-08-10T20:25:02Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > Yeah, but who would share that information? Were the “patients” hanging around the front desk? And although much less likely, how would they know if some of the people not involved were fakes? It would presumably only take some legwork to determine if the real patients were released at the same rate as the fakes, and it might have been possible to arrange interviews with a sample once they were out. Also the fake patients interacted with the real patients and took notes. The latter method is shaky, at best, as science, but it’s still information. I’m not suggesting that the experiment was at all rigorous, just that it does provide some basis for comparison. I don’t know how you’d design a rigorous experiment along these lines without running into serious ethical issues. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/9 "2012-08-10T22:47:41Z")
> [@grude](#): > > And since this study was done a LOT has changed, but certainly pathologizing everyday behaviour has accelerated to the point psychologist Christopher Moeller can say not having a facebook account is the sign of a psychopath. :eek: This guy’s some outlandish quack, right? No one _seriously_ believes that. Please tell me no one believes that. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/10 "2012-08-10T23:01:37Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > :eek: > > This guy’s some outlandish quack, right? No one _seriously_ believes that. Please tell me no one believes that. Here is the source article, the English translation is pretty rough though. > **[Nach dem Attentat von Denver: Machen sich Facebook-Verweigerer verdächtig?](https://www-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/gesellschaft/panorama/machen-sich-facebook-verweigerer-verdachtig-6395470.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en)** > > Der Attentäter war nicht bei Facebook aktiv. Forscher glauben, dass Online-Abstinenz auf Störungen hindeuten kann. In US-Personalabteilungen wird man sogar misstrauisch, wenn Jobbewerber in Sozialen Netzwerken nichts von sich preisgeben wollen. Here is a English language overview. > **[Is not joining Facebook a sign you're a psychopath? Some employers and...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2184658/Is-joining-Facebook-sign-youre-psychopath-Some-employers-psychologists-say-suspicious.html)** > > The German magazine Der Taggspiegel points out that accused theater shooter James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/11 "2012-08-10T23:24:27Z")
James Holmes’s lack of “internet presence” was frequently commented on by the television talking heads. ---
**Author:** ![iftheresaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecae2f/32.png) [@iftheresaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iftheresaway)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/12 "2012-08-11T03:02:01Z")
The book Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century ([http://www.amazon.com/Opening-Skinners-Box-Psychological-Experiments/dp/0393326551/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344651203&sr=8-1&keywords=opening+skinner’s+box](http://www.amazon.com/Opening-Skinners-Box-Psychological-Experiments/dp/0393326551/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344651203&sr=8-1&keywords=opening+skinner%27s+box)) discusses the Rosenhan experiment, and offers an updated look both at the current perception of the eperiment and the current state of psychogical admissions. There’s a description in the amazon review. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/13 "2012-08-11T12:24:22Z")
The original study scared the crap out of me when I first learned about it. (One of my early interests was Psychology, but after a few classes I decided it wasn’t for me.) And now I go and learn I’m psychopath! (no Facebook account here.) ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/14 "2012-08-11T13:32:12Z")
**Khadaji** - You could’ve just asked up, we’d’ve told you about your psychopathology. Dopers are just helpful that way. StG ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/15 "2012-08-11T14:26:02Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > From all that I can tell, psychiatric or psychological diagnoses are a crapshoot. The tendency is to just give some very knee-jerk broad-brush diagnosis. Like, you get a 15-minute interview, then you’re labeled as > (a) “depressed” or > (b) “anxiety disorder” or > (c) “OCD” or > (d) all of the above. Any responsible psych\*ist wil _not_ reach a diagnosis in 15 minutes. Two years ago, when I was 28, I finally got up the nerve to ask my GP about a referral for ADHD\* testing. Sure, _he_ spent just a few minutes asking me why I thought I may have it, but after that, he gave me a referral and contact info for several different psychologists so i could set up my appointments. To receive a diagnosis, I had to: - Meet with a psychologist 3-5 separate times (an hour each) so she could not only get my history but also observe me over multiple sessions. - Take home questionnaires about my behaviors, tendencies etc to fill out, one for me _and_ one for my husband, which we were to fill out privately and not discuss until after the next appointment. - When the psychologist felt confident in her diagnosis that I did indeed have ADHD (Inattentive), - I had to set up an appointment with a _psychiatrist_, to whom she sent her documentation and evaluation. - The psychiatrist then evaluated me for about 60-90 minutes. _Only_ at that point did I get an official diagnosis. I hear of people who get anti anxiety/antidepressant/ADHD medication after just asking about it, but I didn’t experience that. Perhaps some GPs don’t want to bother with a referral and just prescribe a med to see if it helps. If so, that’s not the psych\*ists’ fault. - As an aside, there is no “ADD” anymore, strictly speaking. The terminology has evolved to ADHD with specific types: hyperactive (physically hyperactive), inattentive (mentally hyperactive) or combined (a mixture of the previous two). So a kid who would’ve been described as having both ADD and ADHD a decade ago would now likely be diagnosed as ADHD Combined. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/16 "2012-08-11T17:21:08Z")
From my experience, a diagnosis is very hard to come by–with the possible exception of depression. What happens is you present with symptoms. You’ve only given a few minutes with the doctor, so what is he going to do? Use the time to ask you a trillion questions and work out a complex algorithm in his head? Or write you a prescription for medication for the symptoms you are presenting with and hope for the best? On my chart, for the longest time, I only had one diagnosis. But if you’d looked at the list of medications I had tried, you would have thought I had eleventy billion different disorders. ---
**Author:** ![Brynda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Brynda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brynda)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/17 "2012-08-11T17:34:52Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Definitely, I’d like an update on this too! > > Funny thing: I swear to Og, when that experiment was controversially in the news in the first place, I thought it was done by Zimbardo! > > From all that I can tell, psychiatric or psychological diagnoses are a crapshoot. The tendency is to just give some very knee-jerk broad-brush diagnosis. Like, you get a 15-minute interview, then you’re labeled as > (a) “depressed” or > (b) “anxiety disorder” or > (c) “OCD” or > (d) all of the above. > > and then they start throwing pills at you until one of them either > (a) cures you or > (b) kills you > whichever comes first. > > If you are seriously enough disturbed that you need to be taken in for “observation”, the “common knowledge” is that you dare not express annoyance at this, as it will only confirm your pathological inability to manage anger. Or something like that. > > Not that I have any experience quite like that (yet). Some years ago I realized, in retrospect, that I had come very close to having that experience. Can somebody chime in here with some ignorance-fighting? Is there anything to the popular horror stories like this? Or have I just been re-reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest a little too much? > > But, to stick to the topic: Yes, I’d like to see some update on Rosenhan too. I am sure some 15 minute diagnoses happen, but I think they are more uncommon than the Internet would have you think. I am a psychologist, and what may look like just a series of questions to you is following a diagnosis tree to me. Plus I am observing, and comparing what I see to the data bank in my head. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/18 "2012-08-11T17:45:22Z")
> [@zweisamkeit](#): > > Any responsible psych\*ist wil _not_ reach a diagnosis in 15 minutes. See, I gather from this, that you have had access to psych\*ists who are actually getting paid (by you or insurance or somebody) to do their jobs. Contrast the poor HMO members, or Medicare or Medicaid schmucks who get (and this only if they’re lucky) only perfunctory assembly-line one-size-fits-all medical care, including psych\* care. Consider the example you pointed out yourself: No more ADD, but a variety of more specific higher-resolution diagnoses. But with the quick-and-dirty style care, you’d just get a superficial evaluation (nothing like what you described!) followed by a generic AD\* diagnosis and a bottle of pills. Just take two at bedtime, and if you’re still alive in the morning, you needn’t call back. I’ll give a shred of credit to my HMO, however: Pills aren’t their first choice of treatment, they seem to be the second choice. First of all, after your 15-minute initial interview and a rough diagnosis, you get steered into “group therapy”, which in this HMO seems to mean some kind of superficial CBT indoctrination bullshit. (BTW, before the full SDMB pounces, I’ll say: I’m not so sure if CBT is worthwhile or total BS, only that I’ve only experienced it in “group therapy” as done at this HMO, which I’m sure was vastly worse than total BS. I got one remark from **even sven** several months ago that seemed to suggest it could be useful in 1-on-1 talk therapy, but I haven’t had that pleasure.) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/19 "2021-08-05T05:31:42Z")
Bump! Yes, NINE years later indeed! Who here is still interested in this? I’m a bit disappointed that this thread never really answered OP’s question “How is the Rosenhan experiment viewed in modern psychiatry?”, beyond OP’s remark: > [@grude](#): > > . . . since this study was done a LOT has changed . . . Today, we see news that the Rosenhan Effect is alive and well: > **[Man arrested in mistaken identity case locked in Hawaii mental health...](https://news.yahoo.com/man-arrested-mistaken-identity-case-144636493.html)** > > Joshua Spriestersbach was released after being locked up for two years and eight months and forced to take psychiatric drugs Joshua Spriestersbach, who was wrongfully arrested for someone else’s crime and then committed to a state hospital, was... TL;DR: Homeless man in Hawaii mistaken for someone else, arrested for a crime that someone else committed, and locked away in a psych hospital for over two years, diagnosed as delusional when he denied being the person they thought he was. Numerous people involved in the law enforcement and at the hospital failed to do so much as make a phone call or google search which could have verified who he was, or who he wasn’t. > [@](#): > > Spriestersbach’s lawyers argue that the mixup could have been avoided if police had simply compared the two men’s fingerprints and photographs. Instead, Hawaii officials locked Spriestersbach in the Hawaii State Hospital for nearly three years and forced him to take psychiatric drugs. In January 2020, officials realized their mistake and quietly released him, with 50 cents to his name. > > “The more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the HSH staff and doctors and heavily medicated,” the petition said. “No one would believe him or take any meaningful steps to verify his identity and determine that Mr. Spriestersbach was telling the truth – he was not Mr Castleberry,” it added. > > For two years and eight months, hospital staff and Spriestersbach’s own public defenders refused to believe him, until a hospital psychiatrist finally listened. According to the court document, all it took were a few Google searches and phone calls to confirm that he was on another island when Castleberry was initially arrested. (ETA: Above article, seen at Yahoo News, originally published in The Guardian, Aug. 4, 2021. Note, it says he was released in January 2020. Not obvious why this is suddenly in the news now and not then.) ---
**Author:** ![Enjoy\_Slurm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enjoy_slurm/32/3937_2.png) [@Enjoy\_Slurm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enjoy_Slurm)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2021, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070/20 "2021-08-05T06:31:27Z")
> [@grude](#): > > but certainly pathologizing everyday behaviour has accelerated to the point psychologist Christopher Moeller can say not having a facebook account is the sign of a psychopath. Hopefully this Christopher Moeller psychopath has been locked away for saying something so crazy. Thanks for the update, even though it seems like nothing has changed since the original experiment. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-the-rosenhan-experiment-viewed-in-modern-psychiatry/631070.md?page=2)