Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT 4116-4120 (October 21st-25th, 2019)

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BenRG:
None on Patreon either, which is very unusual. Jeph also hasn't done anything on Twitter for almost a day.

He did say that he wasn't feeling well, though.

Penquin47:

--- Quote from: oddtail on 29 Oct 2019, 08:58 ---This is gonna be about as legitimate as any "I've read this somewhere, but no, I don't have a link" since I read about it about 15 years ago, but there were actual experiments conducted where psychiatrists were admitted to mental hospitals under the pretense of having some (minor but somewhat disruptive) mental issues. IMMEDIATELY after being admitted, they stopped faking the symptoms.

Some took notes about their stay in the hospital, and hospital staff made a note that they were "engaging in writing activity" without ever asking what the patient was writing. Which, call me crazy, strikes me as the first thing a doctor should do? Scratch doctor - if I knew someone and they started taking extensive notes, human curiosity would drive me to ask "hey, whatcha writing?".

Some simply said they were psychiatrists and were fine and this was an experiment, and they were disbelieved or ignored altogether by the staff. Note that the symptoms they had been faking had nothing to do with delusions or a disconnect from reality, and this would be a pretty strange lie for someone who admitted themselves voluntarily to a hospital to tell.

The conclusion seemed to be that if a person is perceived as mentally ill by doctors and nurses and whatnot, it's impossible to convince them otherwise. It doesn't matter how "normal" you talk to them and behave, and even having specialist knowledge about the human mind is not enough.

Here's the kicker. The staff of a few other hospitals were TOLD a similar experiment would be conducted (e.g. some patients would really be doctors with no mental illness symptoms). The staff became extremely suspicious of many newly admitted people, to the point of being certain they were actually doctors. From what I remember (don't quote me on that), up to HALF of people admitted were believed to be faking it. Of course, the experiment consisted in NOT sending a single doctor to the hospitals. When people with legitimate mental problems - or at least people who were genuinely thought to have some - were implied by other circumstances to maybe actually be healthy, doctors second-guessed themselves a lot.

YMMV, but to me the notion that whether you're mentally healthy or not can largely depend on the completely subjective reasoning of a doctor and you're evaluated on the basis of expectations more than your actual behaviour? Pretty scary. And I'm sure it's changed, because medical knowledge has surely advanced in the decades since that experiment probably took place.

But y'know, still makes me uneasy. And that's just about misdiagnosis, as opposed to committing, medicating or crippling people because they were inconvenient to deal with - for personal, political, racist reasons. Which is well-documented in many countries' histories. Lobotomy was a way to cripple a person permanently in order to essentially make them less disruptive. It offered literally no benefits other than making the patient docile. And it received a Nobel Prize in medicine.

--- End quote ---

Here you go: Rosenhan Experiment

oddtail:
Thanks! Seems I misremembered some details (in my defense - again, that's from something I read once, and at least 15 years ago), but reading the wiki article, I'm pretty sure that's the experiment I read about.

BubblesWasRight:
It seems like Roko is having a time of it, so I found something that might cheer her up

Thrillho:

--- Quote from: BubblesWasRight on 05 Nov 2019, 05:48 ---It seems like Roko is having a time of it, so I found something that might cheer her up

--- End quote ---

It is genuinely unbelievable to me that you registered just to post this. I'm so happy.

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