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How The Rosenhan Experiment Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, capetch ng. And that
0:16
Speaker 1: makes this a normal episode of Stuff you should Know.
0:19
Speaker 1: That's right, the continuing bucket of Josh's obsession with psychology
0:25
Speaker 1: and psychiatry. It's so interesting. I know, I love it.
0:30
Speaker 1: These always come from you, and they're always interesting, So
0:33
Speaker 1: let's do it. So we're talking today specifically about a
0:36
Speaker 1: particular study, a very famous psychology study. UM. And the
0:42
Speaker 1: whole thing is kind of rooted in context that you
0:45
Speaker 1: have to know, which is that UM. There was a
0:47
Speaker 1: time up until about the fifties when psychiatrists were considered
0:54
Speaker 1: like unquestionable, no matter how weird or brutal or potentially
0:59
Speaker 1: lie taking their methods were. If it was if it
1:03
Speaker 1: was a psychiatrist saying this is needed for mental health,
1:07
Speaker 1: then society just went along with it, right. But then
1:11
Speaker 1: at some point in time there was kind of this
1:13
Speaker 1: backlash against that because people started questioning, like, are you
1:16
Speaker 1: sure you guys know what you're talking about? And if
1:19
Speaker 1: you don't, UM, what you're doing is even more horrific
1:23
Speaker 1: than we thought before. And I was trying to think
1:25
Speaker 1: of a good analogy, Chuck, and the best I could
1:27
Speaker 1: come up with is, let's say you gave a group
1:30
Speaker 1: of church officials free, free reign to hunt witches, tortures
1:37
Speaker 1: suspected witches, violently exercised demons from from um people who
1:43
Speaker 1: are possessed, and then society figured out that not that
1:49
Speaker 1: those things don't exist, but that in this case, the
1:53
Speaker 1: church officials themselves don't exist. Right, So, in this case,
1:59
Speaker 1: mental illness does exist, but the witch hunters don't aren't
2:03
Speaker 1: actually real, their methods don't mean anything. They're completely made up.
2:06
Speaker 1: And that was the crisis of confidence that psychiatry was
2:09
Speaker 1: going through in the middle of the twentieth century. People
2:12
Speaker 1: started doubting that it had any kind of veracity whatsoever,
2:16
Speaker 1: and that they were just torturing mentally ill people to
2:19
Speaker 1: try to figure it out as they went along. Yeah,
2:22
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to get on some anti medication,
2:26
Speaker 1: anti psychiatry soapbox, but I will say this, and you
2:29
Speaker 1: know this about what's been going on in my private life.
2:32
Speaker 1: But I have seen a very sad situation of someone
2:36
Speaker 1: I love dearly in my own life over the past
2:38
Speaker 1: few years deteriorate. Because while conditions in like let's just
2:44
Speaker 1: call them asylums what they call them back then, have
2:47
Speaker 1: certainly improved, Uh, there's still a lot of lines that
2:51
Speaker 1: can be drawn to doctors forgetting when it comes to
2:57
Speaker 1: mental illness, forgetting there as a human sitting there in
3:00
Speaker 1: front of them, uh, when medication is being thrown at them.
3:05
Speaker 1: And again the medication can be great, not going on
3:08
Speaker 1: some big tirade against uh uh antipsychotic meds and things
3:13
Speaker 1: like that. But I've just seen it happen up close
3:17
Speaker 1: and impersonal, and it is a it is still a
3:19
Speaker 1: very broken system in many ways, and it's really really sad. Yeah,
3:22
Speaker 1: And what you just mentioned is it's a longstanding kind
3:25
Speaker 1: of tack that psychiatry has taken, which is they're battling
3:29
Speaker 1: the disease and the patient is just kind of an
3:32
Speaker 1: unfortunate casualty of that battle sometimes, you know what I mean.
3:36
Speaker 1: And so finally people stood up and said like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
3:40
Speaker 1: we need to like rethink this psychiatry. Like you guys
3:43
Speaker 1: are giving people lobotomies, You're throwing powerful um like psychotropic
3:48
Speaker 1: medications at people that can rob them of their will.
3:51
Speaker 1: Um and rob them of their personalities, like we need
3:54
Speaker 1: to rethink this, And something called the anti psychiatry movement
3:58
Speaker 1: started to develop, um, both in the general public and
4:01
Speaker 1: amongst some psychiatrists and psychologists themselves, and in the Church
4:05
Speaker 1: of scientology. Yes, scientologists hate this stuff, um, but they
4:10
Speaker 1: really are kind of vehemently opposed to the entire idea,
4:13
Speaker 1: it seems like, whereas this was more like the anti
4:16
Speaker 1: psychiatry movement, especially within the profession, was like, Okay, our
4:20
Speaker 1: goals are noble. What we're trying to do is worthwhile.
4:24
Speaker 1: We just don't know what we're talking about yet, and
4:27
Speaker 1: we need to figure out a better strategy. Yeah, And
4:30
Speaker 1: as we'll see, certain things like if you listen to
4:32
Speaker 1: our episode on Titticut Follies, things like that popped up
4:36
Speaker 1: here and there throughout history to make people really pump
4:39
Speaker 1: the brakes and go, wait a minute, how how are
4:40
Speaker 1: we treating people with mental illness in this country? Like?
4:44
Speaker 1: What the heck is going on? So there was a
4:49
Speaker 1: a person named R. D. Lange who was um didn't
4:54
Speaker 1: like to be like fully put in the box of
4:56
Speaker 1: like anti psychiatry, but was certainly criticized and questioning the
5:01
Speaker 1: fact that Hey, Um, we're observing these behaviors. It's a
5:05
Speaker 1: behavioral things that we're witnessing, and we're treating them biologically,
5:10
Speaker 1: and like, there's there's something missing here. There's a piece
5:13
Speaker 1: that's missing. And R. D. Lange was giving a lecture
5:18
Speaker 1: one time that was seen by a gentleman that we're
5:22
Speaker 1: talking about today, David Rosenhand, who was a psychologist and
5:26
Speaker 1: rosen Han. I guess it. You know it touched a
5:28
Speaker 1: nerve with rosen Han or is it Rosenhand? You know
5:31
Speaker 1: I've always said hand, Okay, Rosenhand, that's what we'll go with.
5:35
Speaker 1: We definitely won't switch back and forth Overard. No, well,
5:39
Speaker 1: we definitely won't say I'm both in secession. But Rosenhand said, Hey,
5:44
Speaker 1: this lecture spoke to me. Um, tagging someone is mentally
5:48
Speaker 1: ill quote unquote mentally ill is does humans a disservice
5:54
Speaker 1: because that's a tag that they live with, not only
5:57
Speaker 1: in the eyes of others, but to themselves, and it
5:59
Speaker 1: can calls real damage. Um, and some of these people
6:03
Speaker 1: aren't mentally ill. So we need to really take a
6:05
Speaker 1: look at this. And I have some ideas on how
6:08
Speaker 1: to tackle it. Yeah, and we should say in this episode,
6:11
Speaker 1: we're going to use the word sane and insane a lot,
6:14
Speaker 1: and nowadays you would call that healthy or mentally ill
6:19
Speaker 1: um And the reason we're kind of using it like
6:21
Speaker 1: that's number one, that's the terms they used back then.
6:23
Speaker 1: But also it's different. It was a different understanding that
6:26
Speaker 1: back then that there there wasn't gradiations of mental wellness.
6:30
Speaker 1: There was you were sane or else you were insane.
6:32
Speaker 1: And once you were insane or labeled insane, you had
6:36
Speaker 1: that label for life. You were in remission, but you
6:39
Speaker 1: still had that that label of you know, that you
6:43
Speaker 1: carried around for the rest of your life. Yeah, that's
6:45
Speaker 1: a good point. I'm glad you made that. Actually. Uh so.
6:48
Speaker 1: Rosen Han also at some point previous to this, underwent
6:53
Speaker 1: a experimental eight day in patient uh you know, and
6:59
Speaker 1: this was rosen and wasn't like a Rosenhand there I go.
7:03
Speaker 1: Wasn't saying, oh, I'm not feeling well, I'm gonna try this.
7:05
Speaker 1: Rosenhand said all right, I'm completely saying I'm gonna check
7:08
Speaker 1: myself in for eight days as an impatient and see
7:10
Speaker 1: what happened. Because I want to maybe convince some of
7:14
Speaker 1: my students to do this. After he did it, he
7:17
Speaker 1: was like, well, that was intense. I definitely am not
7:20
Speaker 1: going to ask my students to do this. What I'm
7:22
Speaker 1: gonna do is design and experiment where we can have
7:26
Speaker 1: non students do this and then I can tell them
7:28
Speaker 1: what happened. Right, And the basis of it was just
7:32
Speaker 1: one kind of very central question, right, right. So Um
7:37
Speaker 1: Rosine haine Um decided that he was going to design
7:42
Speaker 1: an experiment using those two experiences, and he wanted to
7:45
Speaker 1: see if psychiatrists could do the most basic part of
7:49
Speaker 1: their job, which is identify the difference between a sane
7:52
Speaker 1: person and an insane person. Yeah, and this, it really
7:57
Speaker 1: did make me wonder if he was influenced at all
8:01
Speaker 1: by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I don't know.
8:05
Speaker 1: I saw that he started this in nineteen sixty nine.
8:07
Speaker 1: When was that book published sixty two or sixty three.
8:11
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible and was the stage play, and the
8:13
Speaker 1: whole basis of One Flew with the Cuckoo's Nest was, Uh,
8:16
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen the movie or read the book,
8:18
Speaker 1: which is the both great Uh, it was it was
8:21
Speaker 1: a gentleman who was always in trouble with the law
8:24
Speaker 1: who basically saw a way around going to prison, and
8:26
Speaker 1: that was, um, let me try and convince them I'm
8:30
Speaker 1: insane and we'll be put in a cushy mental institution instead.
8:35
Speaker 1: So the whole basis of that, it's a little different.
8:38
Speaker 1: But was put a sane person in an insane asylum?
8:42
Speaker 1: Again words they use back then, Uh, and let's see
8:45
Speaker 1: if I can fool them. Yeah. And that was written
8:49
Speaker 1: by Ken Kesey, who figures big time into the electric
8:52
Speaker 1: kool aid ASCID test. And he was actually on the
8:55
Speaker 1: ward of a state psychiatric facility in either Oregon or
8:59
Speaker 1: Washington and and he like witnessed this stuff and ended
9:03
Speaker 1: up writing a book. And he was as we'll see,
9:06
Speaker 1: along with rosen Han man, Chuck, why did you do
9:09
Speaker 1: that to me? Along with rosen Hand and a bunch
9:13
Speaker 1: of other people along the years, he helped contribute to
9:17
Speaker 1: opening society's eyes to the ills of institutionalizing the mentally
9:21
Speaker 1: ill and how they were treated. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, So
9:25
Speaker 1: rosen Han gets in there, I'm gonna say on looks
9:27
Speaker 1: like Conomy go ahead and says, all right, here's what
9:30
Speaker 1: I'll do. And this is all in the in the
9:32
Speaker 1: sort of pre study like planning part. I'm gonna call
9:35
Speaker 1: these people's pseudo patients. I'm gonna gather together people who
9:39
Speaker 1: are what I would call perfectly saying, they've never had
9:42
Speaker 1: any history of mental illness. They would go to a
9:45
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospital and they would say, hey, I'm hearing voices. Uh.
9:50
Speaker 1: If it was a man, they would say, I'm hearing
9:51
Speaker 1: a man's voice. It was a woman, they would hear
9:53
Speaker 1: a woman's voice, and it's sort of unclear what they're saying,
9:57
Speaker 1: but I'm hearing the words uh, empty or thud or
10:01
Speaker 1: hollow um, And I figured I should talk to someone
10:05
Speaker 1: about it and let's see what happens. Yeah. And so
10:08
Speaker 1: later people who came and have studied and analyzed this
10:11
Speaker 1: um believed that rosenhan Was was trying to simulate existential symptoms,
10:18
Speaker 1: possibly in existential psychosis, that where somebody has some serious
10:22
Speaker 1: concerns about the meaning of existence all of a sudden
10:25
Speaker 1: they're really concerned that they don't mean anything, that there's
10:28
Speaker 1: no purpose to life, and that he was trying to
10:30
Speaker 1: kind of come up with that using those words. The
10:33
Speaker 1: thing is, after they presented themselves at the psychiatric facility
10:38
Speaker 1: and they gave this false initial complaint. They were also
10:41
Speaker 1: required to give a false name. They were also required
10:44
Speaker 1: to give a false occupation because a lot of these
10:46
Speaker 1: pseudo patients were actually psychologists and psychiatrists themselves, and that
10:50
Speaker 1: would have raised red flags for sure. But also he
10:53
Speaker 1: was worried that they would have gotten special treatment. It
10:56
Speaker 1: would have altered the outcome of the data were collecting.
11:01
Speaker 1: But other than that, other than those three things, the
11:03
Speaker 1: deception ended there. They were supposed to behave exactly like
11:07
Speaker 1: they normally would uh as themselves from from that point on. Yeah,
11:13
Speaker 1: So like when they did interviews and stuff, whether it
11:16
Speaker 1: was intake or just as they went, although we'll see
11:19
Speaker 1: that didn't happen a lot. As they went. Uh, they
11:21
Speaker 1: were to describe their lives as they were, uh, their
11:24
Speaker 1: personalities as they were, their relationships, their medical history. Everything
11:29
Speaker 1: was just straight up and on the straight and narrow. Um.
11:33
Speaker 1: This is very key. They did not take the medications. Uh.
11:36
Speaker 1: They would, you know, do the old trick where you
11:38
Speaker 1: hide them, uh misery style and then uh and then
11:42
Speaker 1: put them like under your mattress or something, or I
11:45
Speaker 1: guess plush them down the toilet. Um. And they were uh.
11:49
Speaker 1: And of course rosen hand is saying that, uh, it's
11:55
Speaker 1: very natural how it happens. It's funny. Rosen And was saying, like, hey, anything,
12:00
Speaker 1: this thing is biased in the favor of these institutions,
12:04
Speaker 1: because like this is the very barest thing that they
12:09
Speaker 1: should be able to tell if someone is sane or insane,
12:12
Speaker 1: and these are completely sane people, so they should really
12:16
Speaker 1: be recognized as frauds. Like this shouldn't be too hard
12:18
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, I mean, like, if you're presented with
12:21
Speaker 1: somebody who has a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy life background history, um,
12:27
Speaker 1: like yeah, you should be able to recognize him as saint.
12:29
Speaker 1: So that was the premise of the whole thing. He
12:31
Speaker 1: also said that they while they were in there, if
12:33
Speaker 1: they were accepted into the facility, they were to become
12:37
Speaker 1: quote paragons of cooperation. That if they were given an
12:40
Speaker 1: instruction from somebody on the staff, they were supposed to
12:43
Speaker 1: happily comply and follow it. Um, they were supposed to
12:46
Speaker 1: just kind of go along and get along, not cause
12:48
Speaker 1: any waves or any trouble. And that he noticed that
12:51
Speaker 1: there's like a built in mechanism to kind of support
12:54
Speaker 1: people from to to be uh cooperative, and that is
12:58
Speaker 1: that they presented themselves as psychiatric patients without anyone in
13:03
Speaker 1: these hospitals being informed that they were there, So they
13:07
Speaker 1: had no idea when they were going to get out.
13:09
Speaker 1: They needed to be on their best behavior and seem
13:13
Speaker 1: as seen as possible so that they could eventually get out. Yeah,
13:17
Speaker 1: and this is where it really differs from Cuckoo's Nest
13:20
Speaker 1: because the main character there, McMurtry, was not cooperative at all,
13:25
Speaker 1: and that you know that led to the tragic ending.
13:29
Speaker 1: But man, yeah, what a movie. What a book. I've
13:33
Speaker 1: never read the book is that as as good as
13:35
Speaker 1: the movie is. It one of those rare things where
13:37
Speaker 1: the movies even better than they're both great. It's it's
13:40
Speaker 1: like a great book, great movie. Yeah, really good stuff. Um. So,
13:45
Speaker 1: the other thing he had in his or claim to
13:47
Speaker 1: have in his hip pocket you can put a pin in.
13:49
Speaker 1: This is a writ of habeas corpus for each patient
13:54
Speaker 1: in case. Uh. They just were like I gotta get
13:57
Speaker 1: out of here, and the hospitals like, sorry, it doesn't
13:59
Speaker 1: work that way. Habeas rid of habeas corpus has to
14:02
Speaker 1: do with reporting unlawful detentions, and so rosen And said,
14:07
Speaker 1: I've got these on hand in case anybody has to
14:09
Speaker 1: get out. Um. And I think he presented it to
14:13
Speaker 1: the pseudo patients that way too, right. Yeah, so don't
14:15
Speaker 1: worry like if it if it really, if push comes
14:18
Speaker 1: to shove, I can get you out of there through
14:20
Speaker 1: the courts basically. So um. And it is really important
14:24
Speaker 1: to know when you're voluntarily checking yourself into a mental
14:27
Speaker 1: facility for the purposes of a deceptive study, right, um.
14:32
Speaker 1: And one of the things that Rosenhand needed for this
14:35
Speaker 1: study was for pseudo patients to take copious notes and
14:38
Speaker 1: observe everything um shot down, interactions, shot down, how they
14:42
Speaker 1: were treated, how other patients were treated, um, just basically
14:46
Speaker 1: everything they could document they were supposed to document, and
14:49
Speaker 1: Rosenhand was initially really worried that this is going to
14:52
Speaker 1: kind of show the pseudo patients hands. So they needed
14:55
Speaker 1: to take these notes secretly, and the pseudo patients figured
14:58
Speaker 1: out very quickly. No one at the psychiatric facility who
15:03
Speaker 1: worked there could have cared less that they were taking
15:06
Speaker 1: notes the entire time, and in fact, they actually, in
15:09
Speaker 1: at least one case, attributed it to their um their
15:13
Speaker 1: psychological condition. Yeah, I mean this, um, I think it
15:18
Speaker 1: speaks to some of the results that we'll find, which
15:21
Speaker 1: was there a lot of time, was not a lot
15:23
Speaker 1: of active participation from staff to patient. So they're like,
15:28
Speaker 1: I don't care, he's writing big whoop, right there was
15:31
Speaker 1: There was a note in one of their files patient
15:34
Speaker 1: engages in writing behavior, but that was it. They didn't
15:37
Speaker 1: think it was weird. They didn't think that whatever happened,
15:39
Speaker 1: those patients just took notes on everything. They were insane
15:43
Speaker 1: and so of course an insane person is going to
15:45
Speaker 1: do that. And so the pseudo patients were able to
15:48
Speaker 1: just take notes out in the open the entire time
15:50
Speaker 1: during their stays. I think when you write engages in
15:53
Speaker 1: and tech behavior on the end, you can make anything
15:57
Speaker 1: like Josh and Chuck exhibited pie casting behavior right exactly
16:02
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden, someone's coming after us. All right,
16:06
Speaker 1: so the study is now designed. Um, he starts, Uh,
16:12
Speaker 1: he's collected these pseudo patients, these volunteers, I guess, and uh,
16:17
Speaker 1: he wants to collect data in the end. Um, we
16:19
Speaker 1: should note that he did throw out the data from
16:22
Speaker 1: one participant because they, I think, kept making stuff up
16:27
Speaker 1: while they were in there and didn't didn't go with
16:29
Speaker 1: the reality of their life. Um. And then another and
16:32
Speaker 1: I have no idea why this person's data wasn't excluded.
16:36
Speaker 1: But another person tried, and this is very McMurtry esque.
16:41
Speaker 1: Although he hated Nurse Ratchet, but he tried to uh
16:45
Speaker 1: to woo a nurse on the premises. Uh said that
16:49
Speaker 1: he was a psychologist, and UH actually provided psychotherapy to
16:54
Speaker 1: some other patients there. Yeah. I suspect that they didn't
16:59
Speaker 1: throw that data out because it was Rosenhan himself. Oh,
17:04
Speaker 1: that would be my guest. My data is still good.
17:08
Speaker 1: I didn't think of that because he was one of
17:11
Speaker 1: the eight pseudo patients at all who went to twelve
17:14
Speaker 1: different places in this study. Very interesting. I think it's
17:17
Speaker 1: a great place for a break. Ye. All right, I'm
17:19
Speaker 1: gonna ponder that whole scene. Uh, and we'll be right back. Alright.
17:44
Speaker 1: So it's nineteen it's funny. It was published in Science
17:48
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. But I didn't see I couldn't
17:50
Speaker 1: find anywhere when this happened. When did it actually happen?
17:53
Speaker 1: I saw seventy two. It's weird. I looked in a
17:56
Speaker 1: bunch of places and it all just dived right into
17:59
Speaker 1: the thing without saying what ear it was? Yeah, I
18:02
Speaker 1: said I noticed that too. I found it in one place.
18:04
Speaker 1: All right, So seventy two The Summers of Love and
18:09
Speaker 1: eventually published in Science, which, of course we've talked about
18:12
Speaker 1: it a lot. It's one of, um, if not the
18:14
Speaker 1: most prestigious academic journal in US history. So it's not
18:18
Speaker 1: like it was published in Popular Mechanics or something like that. Hey,
18:21
Speaker 1: Popular Mechanics is pretty great, or BuzzFeed. Sorry, let's say
18:25
Speaker 1: Highlights Children. Oh, I love Highlights, which is the one
18:29
Speaker 1: I was on the cover of, like like Catholic Boy's
18:33
Speaker 1: Life or something Catholic nuns like Expelled. It was spelled
18:43
Speaker 1: n O N E apostrophees. Uh so where were we?
18:48
Speaker 1: All right? It's nineteen seventy three. It's published in the
18:50
Speaker 1: journal Science. Uh. It was called on Being Sane and
18:54
Speaker 1: Insane Places. And it's a really great read. You sent
18:58
Speaker 1: me in the original article. It's awesome. You can still
19:01
Speaker 1: find it and read it. It's a really good read
19:03
Speaker 1: because it doesn't take the form of a regular scientific
19:06
Speaker 1: academic journal. UM doesn't have a lot of data, not
19:10
Speaker 1: a lot of statistics, UM, not a lot of a
19:13
Speaker 1: lot of things UM methodology, like results. It's just sort
19:18
Speaker 1: of written out like this kind of uh challenge essay, which,
19:24
Speaker 1: as we'll see, ended up. You know, therere being a
19:26
Speaker 1: lot of problems with it, but it makes for a
19:28
Speaker 1: much better read than most things in science. Yeah. He
19:31
Speaker 1: starts a lot of paragraphs with oh here's another thing,
19:34
Speaker 1: right Yeah. So, Um, like I said, Rosenhan was one
19:38
Speaker 1: of the eight pseudo patients. There were eight and all, um,
19:42
Speaker 1: five of them were men, the other three were women. Um,
19:46
Speaker 1: and five of the eight were somehow engaged in psychology
19:49
Speaker 1: or psychiatry plus him, are including him? Do you know?
19:52
Speaker 1: I think I think including him? Yeah, I think he's
19:55
Speaker 1: included all of those. And um. He sent them to
19:58
Speaker 1: twelve different facilities in five different states on the East
20:01
Speaker 1: coast and West coast. Um, and they were all different kinds.
20:05
Speaker 1: He specifically tried to make his sample representative of the
20:08
Speaker 1: kind of facilities that you would find throughout the United States. Yeah. Um,
20:13
Speaker 1: one of them was a private hospital eleven where state run. Um,
20:17
Speaker 1: so not the biggest division there, but they did run
20:20
Speaker 1: the gamut from older kind of rundown places to newer places. Uh.
20:26
Speaker 1: Some places had um really good ratios of patient staff,
20:30
Speaker 1: some my really crutty ones uh and not nearly enough
20:34
Speaker 1: staff uh, somewhere research based and oriented, somewhere not at all.
20:38
Speaker 1: So it seems at least that he had a pretty
20:41
Speaker 1: decent representation, right he so Um again, in the design
20:47
Speaker 1: of his study, he has set it up to make
20:50
Speaker 1: it as easy as possible for anyone in these psychiatric
20:53
Speaker 1: facilities staffs to notice that, you know, this person is
20:58
Speaker 1: actually not mentally ill at all. They're giving us all
21:00
Speaker 1: this information that's contrary to that. So he he, like
21:03
Speaker 1: he said before, Um, he biased it in favor of
21:07
Speaker 1: the psychiatric staff finding out that these people were saying.
21:10
Speaker 1: And he said that there were some things that he
21:13
Speaker 1: considered and then dismissed about why they may have been admitted,
21:16
Speaker 1: because we haven't said it yet, but all eight were
21:18
Speaker 1: admitted in all twelve instances, Um. And one of the
21:22
Speaker 1: reasons he considers they were possibly that possibly affected the
21:25
Speaker 1: diagnosis and their mission admission was that they were nervous,
21:28
Speaker 1: like the site of the pseudo patients were nervous about
21:31
Speaker 1: being found out they were They were nervous they were
21:33
Speaker 1: going to be embarrassed or shamed or maybe get into
21:35
Speaker 1: some sort of trouble Um. And so he said that
21:39
Speaker 1: might have contributed a little bit, but probably no, not
21:42
Speaker 1: enough to be admitted into a psychiatric facility. So he
21:45
Speaker 1: he kind of dismisses that thought. But what he says
21:48
Speaker 1: is that they were all really surprised at how easily
21:50
Speaker 1: they were admitted. Yeah. I mean, I think in the
21:53
Speaker 1: late nineties sixties, when you show up say you're hearing
21:56
Speaker 1: voices in your head, they believe you and they say,
21:59
Speaker 1: all right, you're, uh schizophrenic, and welcome to the facility. Uh,
22:04
Speaker 1: here's your here's your outfit, and here's your room, and uh,
22:08
Speaker 1: here's your pills. And that's basically what happened. I think
22:11
Speaker 1: they were all save one, diagnosed with schizophrenia UM. The
22:16
Speaker 1: one was at the private run Interestingly institution, and they
22:21
Speaker 1: were diagnosed as what would now be bipolar disorder. Back
22:25
Speaker 1: then they called it manic depressive psychosis. But they were
22:29
Speaker 1: all ushered in basically with open arms. Yeah. And I
22:32
Speaker 1: saw and I think a big Think article on this
22:35
Speaker 1: UM study. They pointed out that, like this is the
22:38
Speaker 1: opposite of what it's like when you try to get
22:41
Speaker 1: mental health treatment today. It's really hard, it's really expensive.
22:46
Speaker 1: You don't just show up and they let you in
22:48
Speaker 1: and here's your gown and here's your pills kind of thing.
22:50
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting in that respect as well.
22:53
Speaker 1: But then once these pseudo patients were in the ward again,
22:57
Speaker 1: they have diagnoses of schizophrenia. Now, um, there wasn't a
23:01
Speaker 1: single instance where any of their behavior was questioned by
23:04
Speaker 1: the staff, are considered suspicious, and um he got he
23:09
Speaker 1: obtained most of the reports from these visits and in
23:12
Speaker 1: the files, there's no questioning or suspicion whatsoever about the
23:15
Speaker 1: pseudo patients at all. No, I mean they would uh
23:19
Speaker 1: the reports were really good, and that all the people
23:21
Speaker 1: were like model patients and cooperating and friendly and engaging
23:26
Speaker 1: and like. These things were noted, but no one ever
23:29
Speaker 1: said like, uh, and we'll see you know some of them, Well,
23:32
Speaker 1: we'll get to that point. Because I think that's one
23:33
Speaker 1: of the more remarkable parts of it is how they
23:36
Speaker 1: noted that. But what they didn't note was like, you
23:40
Speaker 1: know what, this person doesn't seem like there's anything going
23:42
Speaker 1: on with them at all. Uh. It was just sort
23:46
Speaker 1: of accepted, like they're here, so this is what is
23:49
Speaker 1: going on with them. It's really interesting. But that was
23:52
Speaker 1: the staff, right, What about the other patients of the facility. Yeah,
23:55
Speaker 1: this I think is super fascinating. They were the only
23:59
Speaker 1: ones that were into it. The other patients they were
24:01
Speaker 1: basically were like, you're not one of us, and I
24:04
Speaker 1: and we can tell um and I trying to remember
24:08
Speaker 1: in Cuckoo's Nest, I think he basically told everyone right away,
24:13
Speaker 1: like the other patients like I don't belong here, um,
24:16
Speaker 1: and he kind of became the de facto leader. But
24:18
Speaker 1: at uh these places with rosen Han, they've they basically said, hey,
24:23
Speaker 1: we don't think you're real. We think you're either a
24:26
Speaker 1: journalist um, trying to expose the facility, or maybe you're
24:31
Speaker 1: you work for the facility and you're you know, in
24:34
Speaker 1: there as a mole kind of checking on things. Yeah exactly,
24:38
Speaker 1: but either way, we don't believe you. And it seems
24:40
Speaker 1: like in most cases they were uh. And I love
24:44
Speaker 1: that you actually put sniffed off the case and because
24:47
Speaker 1: you put this together, But they were sniffed off the
24:49
Speaker 1: case generally by just being reassured by the pseudo patients
24:53
Speaker 1: that no, I'm just feeling better, That's why I'm acting
24:56
Speaker 1: this way, right. Can't you just see Mr Martini saying, like,
25:00
Speaker 1: I know you're checking up on the hospital. So there's
25:05
Speaker 1: the thing that Rosenhand points out, and he just kind
25:07
Speaker 1: of brushes past it, but it's kind of important. He
25:10
Speaker 1: says that while the other patients you know, found them
25:13
Speaker 1: out immediately, um, none of the pseudo patients were closely
25:18
Speaker 1: examined by the psychiatric staff, by the actual psychiatrists. They
25:22
Speaker 1: had plenty of interaction with the nurses, the order lads,
25:26
Speaker 1: you know, the people who interact with the patient's day today.
25:29
Speaker 1: But none of them, in all twelve instances, all twelve visits,
25:32
Speaker 1: none of them were closely examined by a psychiatrist. And
25:36
Speaker 1: you can imagine that an inmate or a patient at
25:39
Speaker 1: one of these facilities is going to have the opportunity
25:42
Speaker 1: to really closely pay attention to you and interact with
25:45
Speaker 1: you and see your behavior. So it might have been
25:47
Speaker 1: easier for them just because they interacted with them more.
25:50
Speaker 1: But he defends this, you know, potential flaw in his
25:54
Speaker 1: design and saying like, these hospitals had plenty of opportunity
25:58
Speaker 1: to closely examine pseudo patients and they didn't. So whether
26:02
Speaker 1: that was the reason they didn't find them out or not,
26:05
Speaker 1: it was still a huge failing of the psychiatric system
26:08
Speaker 1: and their process, and that they didn't even closely examine
26:11
Speaker 1: these people to see that, oh no, actually these people
26:13
Speaker 1: are faking. Yeah. And not to harp on Cuckoo's Nest,
26:16
Speaker 1: but it was written, you know, as a as a
26:19
Speaker 1: real thing that Kesy did, and it was that's what
26:22
Speaker 1: happened in that book. He you had this initial meeting
26:26
Speaker 1: with a psychiatrist where they diagnosed him, and then it's like,
26:30
Speaker 1: all right, this is where you live now, and these
26:32
Speaker 1: are the orderlies and these are the nurses, and this
26:34
Speaker 1: is your life. There was no regular check ins to
26:37
Speaker 1: see if anybody was getting better, and that was the
26:40
Speaker 1: whole point of this experiment, and in a lot of
26:42
Speaker 1: ways was like it wasn't being done right. These people
26:46
Speaker 1: were just being sent to live away because they were
26:49
Speaker 1: a hassle for their family. They were being sent to
26:51
Speaker 1: live somewhere else now, right. So one of the other
26:54
Speaker 1: themes of Um one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is that,
26:57
Speaker 1: you know, Jack Nicholson is kind of slowly driven crazy,
27:01
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, from being institutionalized. It was
27:04
Speaker 1: one of the main themes um and Rosenhan Actually I
27:08
Speaker 1: don't maybe he did read that book because he accounted
27:10
Speaker 1: for this. Um. He didn't report it I think in
27:13
Speaker 1: the study, but um in a memoir that was found
27:16
Speaker 1: after he died. Uh. He apparently had people visit, you know,
27:21
Speaker 1: friends visit the patients during their stay, and then would
27:24
Speaker 1: interview the friends to see if they noticed any actual
27:27
Speaker 1: change in the pseudo patients, and that none of them did.
27:30
Speaker 1: There was no major, you know, noticeable effect of institutionalization
27:35
Speaker 1: that could have accounted for people you know, mistaking them
27:39
Speaker 1: as as um, you know, having schizophrenia or something. Yeah.
27:42
Speaker 1: And this was over the course. What was the average stay?
27:45
Speaker 1: How many weeks? I think nineteen days, almost three weeks
27:50
Speaker 1: for the average. Yeah. So it's it's long enough to
27:52
Speaker 1: where someone could have said to a visitor like, hey,
27:55
Speaker 1: this place is really wearing on me, starting to lose
27:58
Speaker 1: it a little bit. Uh, And apparently that didn't happen. Um.
28:02
Speaker 1: This is the part that I think really fascinated me
28:05
Speaker 1: was that, Uh, the more saying they were, which was
28:10
Speaker 1: to say, uh, saying appearing um, the more that was
28:15
Speaker 1: looked at as a symptom of schizophrenia. So they would
28:20
Speaker 1: act completely normal, be super friendly, um and very cooperative
28:26
Speaker 1: and sort of like the writing behavior thing. When they
28:28
Speaker 1: looked at these notes, they would indicate this cooperation or
28:33
Speaker 1: just good sense sometimes to do things as part of
28:36
Speaker 1: their problem. Um, and we'll go over a few a
28:39
Speaker 1: few of them. It's it's shocking. Um. There was one
28:42
Speaker 1: that lined up early for meals because I guess they
28:45
Speaker 1: were smart enough to know, like, hey, I get at
28:46
Speaker 1: the front of the line, I get whatever more food
28:48
Speaker 1: or the best food, you know, the best chicken breasts.
28:51
Speaker 1: I don't know. I saw, well, I saw it explained,
28:54
Speaker 1: is there's not a lot else to do or anticipation reward,
28:57
Speaker 1: so like that's that's something to look forward to. Yeah,
29:00
Speaker 1: so they noted that as as an example of oral
29:03
Speaker 1: acquisitive psychotic behavior instead of just like being hungry and bored.
29:09
Speaker 1: Right exactly. That was that was a big recurring theme
29:12
Speaker 1: throughout right. Yeah. This next one was really kind of funny. Um,
29:16
Speaker 1: this one pseudo patient was talking about their marriage in
29:20
Speaker 1: their home life and they said, he, you know, my
29:22
Speaker 1: my life is pretty good. My wife and I get along.
29:24
Speaker 1: We have occasional arguments. Um, very rarely. I spanked my kids,
29:28
Speaker 1: which was you know, something you did back then. So
29:30
Speaker 1: in that context, it was quote unquote normal family life. Uh.
29:36
Speaker 1: And they said that his attempts to control emotionality with
29:39
Speaker 1: his wife and children are punctuated by angry outbursts and
29:42
Speaker 1: in the case of UH, in the case of the children, spankings.
29:48
Speaker 1: Instead of just saying in in marriage, they exhibited behaviors
29:52
Speaker 1: of being married, which is to say, occasionally arguing and
29:57
Speaker 1: again in those days, like I was spanked when I
29:59
Speaker 1: was a kid, we expect, yes I was, and now
30:03
Speaker 1: it's my choice. Good for you. What was the other one?
30:07
Speaker 1: What was the uh? Oh? So that same guy who
30:10
Speaker 1: was trying to control emotionality with his wife. Um, they
30:14
Speaker 1: said that. So during his interview and take interview, he
30:17
Speaker 1: said that when he was a kid, he'd been close
30:19
Speaker 1: to his mom but kind of distant from his father,
30:22
Speaker 1: and then as he became an adult, he actually became
30:24
Speaker 1: close friends with his father and just not quite as
30:26
Speaker 1: close with his mom. Right, that turned into um, a
30:32
Speaker 1: considerable ambivalence and close relationships, and that his effective stability
30:38
Speaker 1: is absent, meaning he's emotionally unstable. Yeah, that's what they
30:43
Speaker 1: gathered from that. You know, my brothers and sisters and me,
30:46
Speaker 1: we really fought a lot when we were young. But
30:48
Speaker 1: now that we're adults, we all get along really well. Right,
30:51
Speaker 1: right exactly, that is psychotic. So the rosenhand goes to um,
30:57
Speaker 1: he goes, he stops and points out, like this is
30:59
Speaker 1: a kind of a major section in the study. He's saying, like,
31:03
Speaker 1: this is the context of the hospital setting. This environment
31:06
Speaker 1: shapes people's perceptions. And he was saying that the people's
31:10
Speaker 1: very sane, very normal personal histories didn't affect the diagnosis
31:14
Speaker 1: of schizophrenia. The diagnosis of schizophrenia altered everyone else's perception
31:20
Speaker 1: of their very sane and very normal personal histories. Yeah,
31:23
Speaker 1: and what really struck me was the Uh, and this
31:27
Speaker 1: is something I think you could, like I said, you
31:29
Speaker 1: can still see today in some cases, is the de
31:31
Speaker 1: personalization that happened. Uh, it was kind of constant. It
31:36
Speaker 1: seems like these patients were generally ignored. Um, this is
31:41
Speaker 1: he Like I said, there wasn't a ton of raw data,
31:44
Speaker 1: but there was a little bit, And one of them
31:46
Speaker 1: was that they were close to fifteen hundred patient initiated
31:52
Speaker 1: contacts with the staff, like four hundred and sixty eight times. Uh.
31:58
Speaker 1: The eight pseudo patients went up and in aged the
32:01
Speaker 1: staff somehow, for some reason. And apparently less than three
32:04
Speaker 1: percent of those resulted in actual verbal engagement back to them.
32:09
Speaker 1: So that tells me that they would just say something
32:11
Speaker 1: to them and be ignored at the time, right, Yeah,
32:15
Speaker 1: they would be ignored. They were powerless because they were
32:17
Speaker 1: stripped of rights, they were mistreated, sometimes violently by the staff.
32:22
Speaker 1: They were just treated like they weren't there, and they
32:24
Speaker 1: came to kind of question their self worth just as
32:28
Speaker 1: a part of the institutionalization process. Um. And that was
32:31
Speaker 1: a big, big point um from this study and one
32:34
Speaker 1: of the lasting effects that had was pointing this out. Um.
32:38
Speaker 1: And like you said, I think the average length of
32:40
Speaker 1: stay was nineteen days, The shortest stay was seven days,
32:44
Speaker 1: the longest stay was fifty two days. Someone was digging it.
32:49
Speaker 1: And in eleven out of twelve of these visits, the patients,
32:53
Speaker 1: the pseudo patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia when they left,
32:57
Speaker 1: when they were determined to be able to return to society,
33:00
Speaker 1: they weren't labeled sane or cured or mentally healthy. They
33:05
Speaker 1: were labeled as having schizophrenia in remission. And that is
33:08
Speaker 1: what Rosenhand was talking about, that once you're labeled insane
33:12
Speaker 1: in our society, especially in the middle of the twentieth century.
33:15
Speaker 1: You were insane for the rest of your life. It's
33:18
Speaker 1: just you might not be actively insane at the moment. Yeah. Absolutely,
33:24
Speaker 1: So I say we take a break because, uh, we
33:28
Speaker 1: got a pretty good twist in the story coming up,
33:31
Speaker 1: and then we'll finish up about how this whole experiment
33:33
Speaker 1: is viewed these days right after this, Okay, chuck sie,
33:58
Speaker 1: So there's an extra twist coming. Um, Rosenhand is just
34:01
Speaker 1: showing off at this point. He's running circles around the
34:04
Speaker 1: field of psychiatry, juggling bowling pins that are on fire
34:08
Speaker 1: for fun, right. Sure. Apparently somehow this word of the
34:12
Speaker 1: study got out before the publication of the study, and
34:16
Speaker 1: some hospital challenged Rosenhand. They said this could not possibly
34:20
Speaker 1: happen at our hospital. So he actually worked with a
34:23
Speaker 1: research hospital, um and said, Okay, the staff was informed
34:27
Speaker 1: that over the next three months, one or more pseudo
34:30
Speaker 1: patients was going to be admitted, and they had the
34:33
Speaker 1: staff rate the patients that were admitted over those three
34:36
Speaker 1: months to see if they could figure out which one
34:39
Speaker 1: was actually faking game on. That's right. Uh So of
34:44
Speaker 1: the one dred and ninety three patients that were admitted
34:47
Speaker 1: to this hospital over a three month period, um, there
34:51
Speaker 1: were forty one that were sniffed off the case as
34:54
Speaker 1: pseudo patients by at least one person on the nerving staffing.
35:00
Speaker 1: You know, they were nervous. It's the funnest staff. Uh.
35:05
Speaker 1: Twenty three. Uh, we're sniffed off the case by at
35:09
Speaker 1: least one psychiatrists, and nineteen of them were suspected by
35:13
Speaker 1: at least a psychiatrist and at least one of the
35:16
Speaker 1: people on the nursing staff so uh, by at least
35:21
Speaker 1: one of the other Uh. Forty fifty sixty four of
35:25
Speaker 1: them were suspected as being pseudo patients. And how many
35:30
Speaker 1: pseudo patients did rosen Hans send their way? Zero? Not
35:36
Speaker 1: fair trick question. He's like Wallace Shawn and the Prince's
35:40
Speaker 1: bride all of a sudden, that's right. So yeah, he
35:43
Speaker 1: didn't deploy any pseudo patients to the hospital and just
35:45
Speaker 1: basically let them chase shadows to prove that not only
35:49
Speaker 1: could they not detect false negatives, they couldn't detect false
35:53
Speaker 1: positives correctly either. So in psychology they call false positives
35:58
Speaker 1: and false negatives type one and type two errors. And
36:01
Speaker 1: he was basically showing like psychiatry is full of judging
36:05
Speaker 1: type one and type two errors. Yeah. I wonder if
36:08
Speaker 1: there was one person on the staff that was trying
36:12
Speaker 1: to talk everyone into like he's not sending any I
36:15
Speaker 1: know it. I know this guy is just messing with us.
36:18
Speaker 1: They locked that guy up and gave him powerful anti
36:21
Speaker 1: psychotic medication. Yeah. So again, I'm sure he was very
36:25
Speaker 1: pleased with himself after this challenge. Uh. And this is
36:30
Speaker 1: at a time and you know I mentioned Titticut Follies earlier. Uh,
36:33
Speaker 1: this is also a time when there was a, um,
36:37
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of sort of inside looks at
36:39
Speaker 1: what was going on in these hospitals. Thankfully because so
36:42
Speaker 1: many of them were exposed in the early seventies. Geraldo
36:45
Speaker 1: Rivera Uh kind of one of the first ways he
36:48
Speaker 1: made a name for himself was, uh, the work he
36:51
Speaker 1: did exposing the Willowbrook States School for the developmentally Disabled
36:55
Speaker 1: on State in Island. Um. Uh, Titticut Follies. Frederick Reisman
37:01
Speaker 1: um did the same thing in the late sixties, and
37:04
Speaker 1: I think even in the eighteen hundreds, a journalist named
37:07
Speaker 1: Nellie Blye did sort of the same thing, going undercover
37:10
Speaker 1: to write a book called Ten Days in a Madhouse.
37:13
Speaker 1: And then of course Kenkisi, Yeah, there's ken Kizi. Two
37:16
Speaker 1: there was a life magazine spread from n called I
37:20
Speaker 1: Think Bedlam forty. And all of these things like really
37:23
Speaker 1: shocked the conscience of society over and over and over again,
37:27
Speaker 1: and so together, including this wave of anti psychiatry, um,
37:31
Speaker 1: Rosenhand's experiment with all these other things helped kind of
37:35
Speaker 1: shape public perception and turn it against if not psychiatry itself,
37:40
Speaker 1: certainly the large state run um depersonalizing institutions that people
37:46
Speaker 1: were typically placed in when they suffered from mental illness. Yeah,
37:51
Speaker 1: and you shouldn't be surprised to learn that John F.
37:53
Speaker 1: Kennedy was the first president to really kind of try
37:58
Speaker 1: and tackle this in a substantive way, um, because you know,
38:02
Speaker 1: he very famously had mental illness in his family. They
38:06
Speaker 1: had a lobotomy in his family, right, yeah, Rosemary. And
38:09
Speaker 1: so he got on it and said, let's put it
38:13
Speaker 1: into the guise of the federal government and get it
38:17
Speaker 1: out of the hands of the state. That was more fat,
38:21
Speaker 1: that was more fat tony than jfk oh mayor Quimby.
38:24
Speaker 1: Come on, um, I know we're all frightened in Horney
38:29
Speaker 1: one of the greatest lines ever on the citizens totally
38:33
Speaker 1: uh yeah. So he said, let's let's put it under
38:35
Speaker 1: the hands of the federal government. The state run facilities
38:38
Speaker 1: are ignored and underfunded, and it's a it's a an
38:43
Speaker 1: S show in there. He coined that term to uh. So,
38:47
Speaker 1: he signed the Community Mental Health Act in nineteen sixty three,
38:50
Speaker 1: but that was underfunded, and that was also an S show. Yeah. So,
38:55
Speaker 1: so the responsibility for treating the mentally ill went from
38:58
Speaker 1: the States to the Feds, but and the Feds never
39:01
Speaker 1: funded that bill. So the treatment of the mentally ill
39:05
Speaker 1: and who is responsible was basically in limbo for almost
39:08
Speaker 1: twenty years um. And then Reagan came along and said,
39:12
Speaker 1: how about this. We'll just push it back to the
39:14
Speaker 1: states and we'll give them a little bit of funding,
39:16
Speaker 1: but not enough. And over the years, the kind of
39:21
Speaker 1: ping ponging between institutions and community based treatment, states responsibility
39:27
Speaker 1: and federal responsibility, all these state run beds were closing
39:31
Speaker 1: and closing, and there are fewer and fewer of them,
39:33
Speaker 1: and so we end up where we are today, which
39:35
Speaker 1: is a mixture of community based treatment, state run hospitals,
39:39
Speaker 1: they're definitely still there. And then private treatment and all
39:42
Speaker 1: of them put together is just not enough. That's why
39:44
Speaker 1: it's so hard and so expensive to get treatment for
39:48
Speaker 1: mental health issues today in the United States. Yeah, and
39:52
Speaker 1: although you can't say this is the only reason, that's
39:54
Speaker 1: one of the reason why so many people, sadly in
39:57
Speaker 1: this country are unhoused today, including you know, veterans, military
40:02
Speaker 1: veterans of the United States. And it's just reprehensible the
40:07
Speaker 1: blind dive that has been taken over the years. In
40:10
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, there was something called the Penrose hypothesis,
40:15
Speaker 1: which basically lays most of the blame on UH imprisonment
40:20
Speaker 1: of the mentally ill and the unhoused population that's mentally
40:24
Speaker 1: ill uh squarely the feet of D institute D instante.
40:31
Speaker 1: I can do this. You can't sound it out. D
40:34
Speaker 1: institutionalization hooked down fun It's worked for you, man. That
40:39
Speaker 1: is a when you look at that, that's a lot
40:40
Speaker 1: of letters it is. It's it's a real bone head word.
40:44
Speaker 1: I just gave myself a pat on the back. You
40:46
Speaker 1: should you deserve it here you say it right now quick,
40:49
Speaker 1: D institutionalization. You show off you've been practicing for once. Anyway,
40:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't that doesn't mean anything. Anyone who listens to
40:59
Speaker 1: the podcast is that me practicing has zero effect on
41:02
Speaker 1: my pronunciation? Is true? Uh So the Penrose hypothesis lays
41:05
Speaker 1: the blame squarely on that uh word that you just said.
41:09
Speaker 1: That's very long and impressive, and you know their statistics
41:13
Speaker 1: that helped back that up. Um. I think from eighteen
41:17
Speaker 1: eighty to two thousand five, the percentage of people with
41:21
Speaker 1: mental illness in prison rose from less than one percent. Yeah,
41:27
Speaker 1: and what else about the unhoused. There's a study from
41:30
Speaker 1: the mid nineties that found that the population of the
41:33
Speaker 1: unhoused in the United States was a hundred thousand and
41:36
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and then in it was up to four
41:40
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Again, that is spans the entire um administration
41:45
Speaker 1: of Ronald Reagan, and a lot of people lay this
41:49
Speaker 1: at his feet. And again it's not that clear cut.
41:51
Speaker 1: The Penrose hypothesis is not cut and dried. But those
41:54
Speaker 1: are some pretty startling statistics. And the idea that if
41:57
Speaker 1: you shut down giant state run insto tuitions and you
42:01
Speaker 1: don't have enough treatment facilities elsewhere, what's going to happen
42:04
Speaker 1: to those people? And it seems like a lot of
42:06
Speaker 1: them end up on the streets or in prison, and
42:09
Speaker 1: that's what America does with It's a large part of
42:12
Speaker 1: its mentally ill population today, especially ones that are people
42:16
Speaker 1: of color and other minorities. To absolutely. Um. As far
42:21
Speaker 1: as Rosenhan's experiment today, how it's viewed, it's, um, why
42:26
Speaker 1: is that funny? Anytime you say rosen Han, now, I'm
42:29
Speaker 1: just gonna crack up. Um, it's it's a little bit
42:34
Speaker 1: of a Stanford prison experiment view of it, which is, um, Hey,
42:39
Speaker 1: this was interesting. We learned some things, but it was
42:42
Speaker 1: not rigorous scientifically. There was no randomization, there was no control,
42:47
Speaker 1: there was no sampling or blinding. Um, you didn't report
42:51
Speaker 1: how you train these participants. A lot of people have
42:55
Speaker 1: disregarded it, like you know, people that are well respected
42:59
Speaker 1: in the in the commune, in any psychiatric community and
43:02
Speaker 1: psychological community. Is nonsense and bunk um and just heavily criticized. Uh.
43:09
Speaker 1: This one quote is I think pretty interesting. As a
43:11
Speaker 1: neuroscientist named Seymour Ketty that uh said, this is explanation
43:18
Speaker 1: if I were to drink a cord of blood and
43:20
Speaker 1: concealing what I had done, come to the emergency room
43:22
Speaker 1: of any hospital and vomited blood. That behavior of the
43:25
Speaker 1: staff would be quite predictable. Uh, they would label and
43:28
Speaker 1: treat me as having a bleeding peptic ulcer. And I
43:31
Speaker 1: doubt that I could argue convincingly that medical science doesn't
43:34
Speaker 1: know how to diagnose that condition. This is taking a
43:37
Speaker 1: little far in a different direction, I think, but I
43:40
Speaker 1: get the point. I saw it put a little more
43:43
Speaker 1: succinctly by a writer in psychology today who said, the
43:45
Speaker 1: only thing the studies showed was that it is possible
43:48
Speaker 1: to deceive doctors by lying to them. So the study
43:52
Speaker 1: does have as detractors if you don't share your data
43:55
Speaker 1: like or your methodology like, it's not a scientific paper
43:59
Speaker 1: at bait. But rosen Hands experiment has survived all these
44:03
Speaker 1: years because even as detractors say, well, it did a
44:07
Speaker 1: really good job of raising the issue of powerlessness and
44:10
Speaker 1: deep personalization in institutions, and that, in and of itself
44:14
Speaker 1: meat makes it a worthwhile study or paper at least
44:17
Speaker 1: for essay. I think it's super interesting and really interesting
44:21
Speaker 1: to read, and I think I agree. I think it
44:23
Speaker 1: did expose a lot of things, But I don't think
44:25
Speaker 1: you could, like point to it as proof of anything
44:28
Speaker 1: necessarily except that the system was pretty messed up. Yeah,
44:32
Speaker 1: and the system is still messed up. I mean that's
44:34
Speaker 1: that that initial thing that already Lang hit on, that
44:37
Speaker 1: that psychiatry treats behaviors it observes with biological medicine is
44:42
Speaker 1: still a problem. There's a guy who used to be
44:44
Speaker 1: the head of the National Institute of Mental Health, Thomas Insel,
44:48
Speaker 1: and he said, unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease,
44:51
Speaker 1: lymphoma or AIDS, the D s M diagnoses are based
44:54
Speaker 1: on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any
44:57
Speaker 1: objective laboratory measure. So psychiatry still finds itself in the
45:01
Speaker 1: same place as ever, and it's now having to fend
45:04
Speaker 1: off kind of um a turf four that's been started
45:07
Speaker 1: by neuroscientists whore like all this stuff is brain based,
45:10
Speaker 1: and we're the ones who can look into the brain.
45:12
Speaker 1: We need to be taking over this stuff, and psychiatrists
45:15
Speaker 1: are like nine in the in the tradition of Freud. Uh.
45:18
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, if people listening, uh, you
45:22
Speaker 1: said r D the initials r D laying not already laying.
45:27
Speaker 1: If you're wondering what Howard Sterns one time sidekick comedian
45:30
Speaker 1: already Lying had to do with any of this? Didn't
45:32
Speaker 1: he hang out with Norm McDonald a lot too. Yeah,
45:35
Speaker 1: I think they were pals, like already Lang. He had
45:38
Speaker 1: some bad troubles for a while. I think he's doing
45:40
Speaker 1: better now. Yeah. R I p Norm McDonald too. Yeah.
45:44
Speaker 1: So as far as Rosenhan himself, there was a book
45:47
Speaker 1: a few years ago and twenty nine team from Susannah
45:51
Speaker 1: Cahalan unless you misspelled Callahan, No, I really wish I had,
45:56
Speaker 1: because that's a tough one. It's probably Kahalan. Uh. It
45:59
Speaker 1: was called The Great Pretender, And Susannah was not very
46:03
Speaker 1: kind to rosen Han and basically said, this guy is
46:07
Speaker 1: kind of a fraud, Like I found instances where Uh,
46:10
Speaker 1: first of all, he didn't have that rid of habeas
46:12
Speaker 1: corpus man. He said he did and told them he did,
46:15
Speaker 1: which is really not cool. Um Uh what else, Well,
46:21
Speaker 1: some of the data, some of the numbers that he
46:23
Speaker 1: put out there don't match. Like she tracked one guy down,
46:26
Speaker 1: Bill Underwood, who was a pseudo patient, and that particular
46:28
Speaker 1: pseudo patient supposedly spent seven days in a hospital at
46:31
Speaker 1: eight thousand patients. He actually spent eight days in a
46:34
Speaker 1: hospital of fift patients, which matters if Rosenhand was saying, no,
46:39
Speaker 1: I'm really kind of getting a random sampler, good sampling
46:42
Speaker 1: of hospitals in America, big ones and small ones, etcetera.
46:45
Speaker 1: If he didn't have an eight thousand patient hospital and
46:48
Speaker 1: d was the tops, maybe that wasn't as random as
46:51
Speaker 1: you'd think. Yeah, And she also, uh, didn't quite but
46:55
Speaker 1: came close to accusing him of flat out making up
46:57
Speaker 1: about half the people. Um, I don't know this is
47:00
Speaker 1: because she only found three plus him uh and said, well,
47:07
Speaker 1: maybe he made up the rest or was there like
47:09
Speaker 1: actual evidence that he may have just made up the
47:11
Speaker 1: rest the former But she took out a an ad
47:14
Speaker 1: basically as an editorial in the Lancet, which is a British,
47:18
Speaker 1: very respective British medical journal, um saying like, hey, I'm
47:22
Speaker 1: looking for the other pseudo patients and got nothing, not
47:25
Speaker 1: a single bite, not not a lead or anything. So
47:27
Speaker 1: she wonders if actually they didn't exist. Interesting. Yeah, And
47:33
Speaker 1: so the thing is, though it doesn't really matter, Like
47:36
Speaker 1: even if he did make up half the data and
47:37
Speaker 1: half the pseudo patients, it doesn't matter because this study
47:40
Speaker 1: isn't based on the data. It's all about the fact
47:43
Speaker 1: that it kind of shone this light on the way,
47:46
Speaker 1: you know, people are treated and how the mentally ill
47:49
Speaker 1: were treated in the United States at that time. You
47:52
Speaker 1: got anything else, no good stuff? Nice work, thanks me,
47:56
Speaker 1: Nice work you. If you want to know more about Rosenhand,
48:00
Speaker 1: rosen Han, whoever, um, you can look up this article
48:04
Speaker 1: on being sane and insane places all over the Internet
48:08
Speaker 1: and I think you'll enjoy it tremendously. And since I
48:11
Speaker 1: said that it's time for listener mail listener mail, I'm
48:16
Speaker 1: gonna call this a couple of quick things on our
48:18
Speaker 1: Mediacci episode. I'm not gonna read this full email, but
48:23
Speaker 1: I did want to point this band out because listen
48:25
Speaker 1: to it and they're awesome. This is from J Deptman
48:30
Speaker 1: sent in this band MARRYATCHI l bronx Uh and they
48:34
Speaker 1: were originally a punk band from l A And apparently
48:37
Speaker 1: they did an acoustic set for a TV show and
48:42
Speaker 1: they played it with a mariachi style just because it
48:47
Speaker 1: had that energy and then they were like, hey, this
48:48
Speaker 1: is awesome and that's kind of what they're known for now.
48:51
Speaker 1: And I played some of it and it's really awesome.
48:54
Speaker 1: And these guys, a lot of them are Caucasian and
48:56
Speaker 1: they wear those outfits and they look awesome. Awesome. See.
49:01
Speaker 1: But the real email I'm gonna read is uh from
49:06
Speaker 1: Marlena Maynard. She her hers, who is a voice teacher,
49:11
Speaker 1: So I imagine Marlena from Nashville knows what she's talking about. Hey, guys,
49:15
Speaker 1: just listen to the episode about Mariaci music. I love
49:18
Speaker 1: how you highlighted issues of class and race in the
49:20
Speaker 1: musical and academic world. I'm a classical singer and vocal coach,
49:23
Speaker 1: and as a professional in the field, we certainly have
49:26
Speaker 1: a long way to go in terms of equity and diversity.
49:30
Speaker 1: But Chuck, you mentioned that you love hearing many voices
49:32
Speaker 1: singing harmony. You weren't sure if five part harmony is
49:35
Speaker 1: a thing. Oh, I have great news, which is that
49:38
Speaker 1: there isn't really an upper limit at all. Five part
49:41
Speaker 1: harmony is fairly common in choral music. If the composer
49:43
Speaker 1: wants to fill out a chord, they can simply write
49:45
Speaker 1: another note and the members of that section will know
49:48
Speaker 1: how to divide accordingly. You also will encounter a lot
49:51
Speaker 1: of pieces for eight voices i e. A double choir
49:54
Speaker 1: or two soprano parts to alto, to tenor and to
49:57
Speaker 1: bass parts. Uh, and then gives an example which I
50:00
Speaker 1: think people should check out. It's called the piece with
50:04
Speaker 1: most parts. With the most parts that I'm aware of
50:07
Speaker 1: is spem in ali Um by Thomas Talise Is from
50:13
Speaker 1: the early sixteenth century. It's got forty vocal parts. Uh.
50:18
Speaker 1: So just go look that up s P E M
50:22
Speaker 1: I N A l I U M on YouTube. And
50:25
Speaker 1: then there's a couple of more um and also lists
50:30
Speaker 1: of bachuin um. And this is Marlena's favorite five part
50:34
Speaker 1: choral pieces, the second movement of Yezo Mina Freida by J. S. Bach.
50:41
Speaker 1: Very nice, So go check all those out. Check out
50:43
Speaker 1: Mariachi l Bronx. You've got a great Tiny Desk concert,
50:46
Speaker 1: among other things. Those are always fun to watch. Do
50:49
Speaker 1: you ever see those? Yeah? I saw one when we
50:53
Speaker 1: did the Mariotti and the Flora. I can't remember the
50:57
Speaker 1: all all women um four piece Mariott band from New York. Yeah,
51:01
Speaker 1: that's off the NPR. The Tiny Desk concert is long
51:04
Speaker 1: been one of my favorite things. So Chuck. Since we're
51:07
Speaker 1: talking music, though, I want to just go ahead and
51:09
Speaker 1: give a shout out an announcement. You could say, are
51:12
Speaker 1: you ready for this? Did your niece write an album?
51:15
Speaker 1: Not yet, she's working on it. Um. Instead, you asked
51:19
Speaker 1: for it and they're giving it to you. On November
51:22
Speaker 1: twenty second, Diarrhea Planet is reuniting in Nashville. What's this
51:29
Speaker 1: because of us? I probably I'm just gonna I assume
51:33
Speaker 1: everything is because of us. No, I don't think it is,
51:35
Speaker 1: but I want to go to that show. I bet
51:37
Speaker 1: you that place is going to go off because they
51:39
Speaker 1: haven't played together in three or four years now. They
51:41
Speaker 1: broke up in two thousand eighteen. So they're going to
51:43
Speaker 1: be at the Exit Inn in Nashville November twenty seconde
51:47
Speaker 1: if you want to make a pilgrimage there. You know,
51:49
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my calendar when it that's it's a
51:52
Speaker 1: bad time a year Diarrhea Planet right at Thanksgiving, right
51:57
Speaker 1: around my wife's birthday. But I've been in more trouble
52:01
Speaker 1: in my marriage, so Nashville's pretty close. I'm going to
52:04
Speaker 1: the see Stevie Nicks. Really, I'm going to see Diaria
52:07
Speaker 1: Planet there. Emily's like, you skip my birthday to see who? Yeah?
52:12
Speaker 1: Fantom Planet with Jason Swartzman oh Man so Chuck who
52:18
Speaker 1: was the the original the two people who wrote in
52:22
Speaker 1: Marlena is the vocal coach and Jay turned me onto
52:25
Speaker 1: Mariachi l Bronx. That's right, Thanks Marlena and Ja. If
52:28
Speaker 1: you want to point out some cool music we've never
52:30
Speaker 1: heard before, we love that kind of thing. You can
52:33
Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio
52:36
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
52:41
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
52:44
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
52:48
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.