Rosenhan's Article On Being Sane In Insane Places

Reaction to Rosenhan Rosenhan’s article On Being Sane in Insane Places brings up many important aspects professionals in the mental health field, and society as a whole, need to consider when treating those who experience mental illness. One of the important key concepts of this article illustrates the difficulty of determining who is “sane” and who is “insane”. This article mentions that those who are diagnosed with a mental illness are not encouraged to fully recover, but rather live in remission and become labeled in a very permanent manner. This type of labeling leads institutions and the professional staff who work for these institutions to consciously and unconsciously distance themselves from the patients (or in some case behave abusively

These close relationships with other clients helped to create a sense of collaborative healing and, in the study conducted; the clients did not feel as much loneliness. It is imperative that the staff in inpatient settings help to cultivate an environment that allows close relationships among patients to form. Unfortunately, the findings of this article showed that very few institutions have policies in place to provide and maintain an environment where such relationships are possible (2014). This article can support the ideas presented in Rosenhan’s experiment which seemed to prove institutions themselves were not providing adequate environments. This article also supports the idea that pseudopatients and patients were negatively affected by the staff’s inability or lack of attentiveness. By not recognizing these issues within the environment, staff members could not provide adequate personal contact to promote healing

Clients experienced stigma in regards to three factors including discrimination, stigma related to disclosure of their mental illness, and rejection of any positive aspects regarding their mental illness. When clients experienced any type of stigma mentioned above, this caused a regression in their treatment. This study found that 89.7% of the participants in the study experienced discrimination for their diagnosis, and 88.4% felt uncomfortable when disclosing their diagnosis (2015). This article supports Rosenhan’s findings that suggest the inpatient staff members’ attitudes and preconceived notions about the psuedopatients and patients created an environment that cultivated depersonalization. Treating those with a diagnosis as “insane” and avoiding contact (or abusing the patients in much more severe circumstances) caused clients to experience stigma and therefore regress in their treatment (1973), much like the participants in the study conducted in San