On being sane in insane places.

 

Jack Nicholson - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', is possibly one of the greatest films of all time. There's really nothing mentally ill about Randle Patrick McMurphy but he contrives to get himself sent to a psychiatric hospital because he doesn't like doing prison work. He's a recusant who likes to take the piss and have a good time. He actually thinks everybody else in the hospital is a nutter but discovers that he's the only one that has been committed. Nurse Ratched is a complete control freak who takes a dislike to McMurphy because he won't conform or comply. After he attacks nurse Ratched, following a patient's attempted suicide, McMurphy is given a lobotomy and turned into a vegetable.

I remember some years ago reading about something called the 'Thud experiment', or what was correctly called, the Rosenhan experiment.  A group of psychologists and their students at Stanford University sought to test the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. The participants in the experiment, all psychology students or their mentors, submitted themselves to various psychiatric institutions across the west coast of America and feigned auditory hallucinations. David Rosenhan, who arranged the experiment, a Stamford University professor, and eight other people, five men and three women, entered 12 hospitals and submitted themselves for evaluation. All the participants claimed to be hearing a voice utter the words 'empty', 'hollow' or 'thud' and nothing else. Once accepted, they acted normally. Each was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given antipsychotic medication. Some of the participants were actually admitted to the hospital for brief periods of time, ranging from 7 to 52 days. Although they presented with identical symptoms, five were diagnosed with schizophrenia and one with manic depressive psychosis. None of the pseudo-patients were identified as impostors by hospital staff, though some psychiatric patients, seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors. One nurse observed the note taking behaviour of one pseudo-patient, and consider it pathological.

The study was eventually published in the journal 'Science' in 1973, with the title, 'On Being Sane In Insane Places'. Many defended psychiatry against the experiment's conclusions, but the experiment is said to have accelerated the move towards reforming mental institutions and the release of many patients from mental institutions.