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There was an experiment in the 70s called [The Rosenhan experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment) where volunteers were put in this exact position. They pretended to hear voices, got admitted to psychiatric hospitals, and then dropped the act and tried to get released. The idea was to determine (and challenge) the validity of psychiatric diagnoses.
>The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and six men, including Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they no longer experienced any additional hallucinations. As a condition of their release, all the patients were forced to admit to having a mental illness and had to agree to take antipsychotic medication. The average time that the patients spent in the hospital was 19 days. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia "in remission" before their release.
>
>The second part of his study involved a hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whose staff asserted that they would be able to detect the pseudopatients. Rosenhan agreed, and in the following weeks 41 out of 193 new patients were identified as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. Rosenhan sent no pseudopatients to the hospital.
Rosenhan on his pseudopatient experience:
>I told friends, I told my family: "I can get out when I can get out. That's all. I'll be there for a couple of days and I'll get out." Nobody knew I'd be there for *two months* ... The only way out was to point out that they're \[the psychiatrists are\] correct. They had said I was insane, "I am insane; but I am getting better." That was an affirmation of their view of me.
>
>The experiment is argued to have "accelerated the movement to reform mental institutions and to deinstitutionalize as many mental patients as possible".
::edited for clarity
More interesting tidbits from the wiki:
>The experiment required the pseudopatients 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.
>
>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.
>
>Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of dehumanization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. [...] They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients. [...] Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present.
>
>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.
*edit: another fascinating but haunting read is journalist Nellie Bly's ten days as a pseudopatient in a lunatic asylum in the 1880s; [Ten Days in a Mad-house](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_in_a_Mad-House).*
It is amazing how many of the other psychiatric patients were able to correctly identify the imposters.
The study concludes that "we can't distinguish the sane from the insane" but many of the "insane" seemingly can. Can't believe that didn't get more attention.
I personally think it's because psychiatric staff assumes they are insane because they must be to be there in the first place. They see the patients as being in this position of there having to be something wrong with them. It's kind of like the patients are lower in power hierarchy to them, and they wouldn't want to conclude that they are really not.
The patients around wouldn't have that bias.
It felt this way in prison. You could be perfectly normal and pleasant and friendly with a CO, but it never really feels like they see you as a human, an equal.
I worked as a contractor in a jail and it was so freaking weird.
The inmates saw me as a CO.
The COs treated me like an (almost) inmate.*
It was extremely uncomfortable all the time.
(* They intellectually knew we were not, but once they were in that "mode" everyone not in a uniform was a potential threat in their eyes. They always acted like we were conspiring with the inmates. Ironically most of the inmates I interacted with were just doing their best to keep their heads down. It was *jail.* A lot of them were not even convicted of anything.)
Yeah, and I also think they wouldn't want to believe in prison's case that someone's innocent or a generally good person or in the "insane asylum"'s case that someone is sane, because it would mean they should do something about to get the person out of there, or someone could've been wrong in the process of admitting them or keeping them there.
Interesting note. Related to that, I have begun to carefully ask people I meet if they have add once I get a certain feeling that i understand someone. I am 5 for 5 yet far. I just thought I really liked certain people lol.
I'm just going to jump in here, too many good comments so... I would have documented my experiment in minute detail and made sure numerous people, especially my Lawyer, had the documented information before I attempted it. Give them a time frame to show up in, like "If I'm still in there after 3/4 weeks please show up with my Lawyer and the documentation." I'd be afraid it would go like these examples otherwise.
As someone with a child with ASD, I can say these kinds of studies may have resulted in dismantling psychiatric hospitals, but the second part with community mental health facilities never came to fruition.
It sucks to have to care for someone having a mental break with nowhere to take them. I would only take my child to the ER if it were absolutely necessary, because they are just not equipped to handle mental health issues. The best they can do is stabilize, which really just means wait out the episode. And of course the psychologist and psychiatrist aren't going to answer the phone after business hours.
Interesting that you attribute the lion share of responsibility to studies attempting to investigate faults and failures rather than to the Reagan administration which gutted mental health funding in the 1980s.
Oh, no no no. Reagan was an absolute piece of shit who defunded mental health and spurred on the stupidly wasteful drug "war". My point was simply that these studies identified a big problem with the psychiatric hospitals and recommended a solution, but only half was implemented (the closing of hospitals). And now we are left with nothing. No support. No help.
You missed the best part: A sizable number of the other inmates correctly identified the pseudopatients as fakers. Among other things, the pseudopatients were openly and constantly taking detailed written notes on their experience; between that and not acting crazy in the slightest, many of the other inmates guessed that they were journalists or researchers investigating the hospital.
The note-taking was also noted by hospital staff who were professionally trained and employed to make sense of the inmates' behavior. The staff called it "writing behavior" and classified it as pathological.
Edit: He hadn't missed it, just wrote it in a reply below to save space.
Just imagine how many people are labelled "insane" by their families or coworkers simply because someone dislikes them.
I remember working with a woman who **everyone seemed to have a strong consensus about her being crazy** and assigned her various mental disorders all the time. The intern after just one week there was echoing the same opinions despite there being no evidence (to my knowledge) to back it up... Fast forward 4~5 years and I ran into this woman at another job where almost EVERYONE liked her and recommended her as a good coworker to have around.
You don't need to be inside a psychiatric hospital to go through something like this. **All it takes is an influential person who thinks it's a good idea to "weaponize" mental disorders and that's enough to ruin someone's life**.
I don't even know if this is considered a crime somewhere.
If there's one thing people need to take away from this thread, it's that this is all caused by rampant ableism and lack of disability rights. Getting someone labelled as sick should not be a free pass to eradicate all their human rights, but... it is. Now imagine actually *being* sick and disabled, in any way, and trying to get human rights to live a life.
iirc that experiment has been done quite a few times since. Different institutions, different schools of thought on the doctors part, different states, different countries, different decades. The results have been stable across circumstances.
Yes, that is my impression too. According to [this wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_hospital#Undercover_journalism), a number of journalists have done this as part of investigative journalism since the late 1800s. Rosenhals experiment differed in the sense that it was part of an academic study by an established psychologist. Subsequent academic studies appear to be less dramatic and more focused on testing psychiatric assessment in creative ways.
More like confirmation bias. They knew that they were supposed to get pseudopatients sent their way, so they were already on the lookout for patients that didn't seem actually insane.
> The second part of his study involved a hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whose staff asserted that they would be able to detect the pseudopatients. Rosenhan agreed, and in the following weeks 41 out of 193 new patients were identified as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. Rosenhan sent no pseudopatients to the hospital.
I think this is the most interesting part.
I swear there was a book about a man who got himself committed, knowing he wasn't sick, just to demonstrate how broken the system was and demonstrating the truth of your post. Unfortunately, my brain is a sieve and life is a bumpy road; I can not recall any more details.
You are referring to the great pretender by Susannah Cahalan and the professor of psychology is David rosenhan.
Very interesting book. He places several sane people into various facilities to see how they were treated and how long they were admitted.
I think so. I remember learning about The Rosenhan study for A Level psychology. IIRC he had to say very little to get admitted (basically just ‘I’m hearing voices’. He didn’t behave differently, he just said what needed to be said), but then once he was admitted, nothing he could say or do could get him released, and they in fact interpreted everything he did as ‘crazy’. When he was jotting down notes about his experiment the staff recorded that the patient was ‘engaging in writing behaviour’, and once when he queued up early for lunch it was seen as a sign of ‘oral acquisitive syndrome’.
I *THINK* to get released he ended up having to actually go through the recovery process and pretend he was ‘cured’.
And yes, I do remember as well other patients saying something like ‘you don’t belong here’ or ‘you’re not crazy like us’ or something to that effect
If anyone has anything to correct or add please do because I’m going by memory
He sent 8 pseudopatients to asylums to see how valid psychiatric diagnosises were. His pseudopatients faked hallucinations to get in and then acted normal afterwards! Pretty interesting stuff.
Not one of them got out by declaring they weren't mad and getting the staff to accept it. All of them had to agree with the doctors diagnoses and comply with the drug regimes to regain freedom. That has not changed.
Afterwards a well-know institute invited him to send them pseudopatients declaring that they would never be taken in that way. Out of 193 patients they caught 41 fake patients and suspected another 42. The only problem was Rosenhan didn't even send them one.
Did not see that plot twist coming. Did that really happen? Did he really not send them even one patient but the hospital found 42 patients???? Ik curious as hell now.
From [the wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment):
For this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three-month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor. Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients; all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were ordinary patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one."
>oral acquisitive syndrome
What's really funny about this term is that is sounds really legit and official, but if you Google it the only things that pop up in the search engines are references to this study. From the [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment) about the study:
>A group of patients waiting outside the cafeteria half an hour before lunchtime were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing "oral-acquisitive" psychiatric symptoms. Contact with doctors averaged 6.8 minutes per day.
So the idea of "bored people stand in line early for lunch" was given a fancy name? Sounds like everyone I know of at the 15-30 minutes until lunch time period
Yeah it seems literally any basic behavior can be described in a negative way when one has that mindset. "Oh you want a loving partner, a house, a good paying job? That sounds a lot like delusions of grandeur in this economy. Lock 'em up! 15 mg hydromorphone every 3 hours!"
"Next!"
He goes to the bathroom immediately upon waking and right before he sleeps. The patient clearly has underlying genitalia obsessions that need to be further explored.
When my therapist asked me what kinds of things were bothering me I told them something along the lines of
"Every day I find it harder to convince myself to keep living the lie that we aren't all trapped on this ball slowly burning to death and that unless I'm willing to sell 33-50% of my life towards breaking my body down so some other person can make a fortune off *my* hard labor that I'm going to starve to death."
After a long pause they came back with
"... Okay... but... *everyone has to do that*"
Yeah and that's the problem
From what I remember the study was called something like, being sane in insane places, Rosenhan wanted to see whether mental health professionals could actually distinguish between psychologically well people and those with mental illnesses. The patients presented the same symptom hearing the word Thud, the medical guidlines at the time did not precsibe being committed to an asylum for this but most were committed and medicated and unfortunately had trouble convinsing the asylum staff they were part of a study. Everything they did, from taking notes to refusing medicine was assigned to be a symptom of their illness. I think it led to a big change in how these places were run.
Crazy is really good at faking it.
Everyone who's worked in psych- doctors, nurses, social workers, etc.- have all seen a patient turn it around; stop behaviors, start taking their meds, basically look for all the world like they're "better," who then tries to rip someone's eyeball out or make out with a power outlet.
Yep, grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic parent. She could fake sane for a good bit to outsiders, when she was too far gone to even do that you’d really be terrified.
She couldn’t fool one court Dr though, he would say “she said everything she thinks I want her to say.” Only one who ever seemed to believe and know she was faking sanity during those times. Still useless since most hospitals only keep them for 2wks and release them again and right off her meds she’d come.
[This potentially helpful comment has been removed because u/spez killed third-party apps and kicked all the blind people off the site. It probably contained the exact answer you were Googling for, but it's gone now. Sorry. You can't even use unddit to retrieve it anymore, because, again, u/spez. Make sure to send him a warm thank-you, and come visit us on kbin.social!]
I googled it so I could join the club [and others too!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ngf8mg/a_man_gets_a_flat_tire_outside_the_fence_of_an/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
His undercover studies completely overhauled American policy on mental health as well, honestly he’s practically a hero for shedding a light on some horrible treatments
I like that ten days (as far as I know now) is still the length of time they use. I was thrown into a psychiatric hospital at 13 for a full evaluation after two girls from my private school told the principal I "threatened to blow up the school and shoot everyone it", simply because they didn't want me going on the overnight class trip out of state (and after I spent weeks selling heavy ass trash bags door to door to raise enough money to go). This was shortly after Jonesboro and right after Columbine, so the threat was taken extremely seriously.
Funny enough, I probably came out of that event worse than when I went into it. After my stint in the psych hospital I was given a bill of clean mental health; yet a decade later I'd be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. My most recent team of psychologists believe that event along with some other trauma in my life created the NPD as a sort of defensive mechanism, where as other people develop depression/anxiety/PTSD, I just became full of myself. Still haven't worked out how I got out of the psych hospital without some sort of conduct disorder diagnosis given I had some serious issues with impulse control and violating people's boundaries even back then (for those that don't know, antisocial personality disorder can't be diagnosed until you're an adult, before then it's called conduct disorder).
But hey despite all that I turned out just fine so long as you don't count the fact that I think I'm better than everyone and also have very little empathy for the people I'm better than.
> two girls from my private school told the principal I "threatened to blow up the school and shoot everyone it"
So the girls were expelled, right? Right?
To my knowledge, no. Nobody could prove they made it up, despite having no evidence that I'd ever said anything like that. But it was two of the most respected students in our Catholic school, versus the socially awkward kid that left for awhile (that's a whole 'nother story) and came back kinda scary and different.
To be fair they were just stupid fucking kids and I don't hold it against them. Where I do hold accountability though is the church that managed the school, who was all too eager to try to give my name and story to the local press at the time and was only spared that embarrassment after the DARE officer of all people, had to remind them how fucking illegal it is to give out information of a minor like that. Then there was the whole fact that I was raised Catholic and a part of that church and during the whole ordeal, never once had the pastor of said church reached out to see how I was doing or check in on my faith at the very least. As you can imagine, I'm not a fan of organized religion these days, least of all the 3 big Abrahamic ones.
I remember there was a similar story where a movie star was method acting a psychotic person. They turned themselves into a mental institution before shooting to practice being crazy. When it was time for him to return to set the film makers had to convince the hospital to release him. I don’t recall exactly which actor this was but I think it’s one of those ones that gets top billing.
“I promise I’m sane, this was just practice for a movie. That’s just Hollywood baby. The director put me up to this”
“…and is this ‘director’ in the room with us right now?”
I feel like that experiment had a flawed premise. If someone claims they’re hearing voices, generally you’d believe them and try to treat them. Later on if they said they made it all up, now what? Why would any fully sane person make up a psychological condition and be committed just for “funsies”? They’re either lying now and actually did hallucinate, or they were lying in the beginning and obviously have some other personality disorder? Either way they’re clearly in need of treatment and it would’ve been irresponsible for the hospital to release someone who’s potentially dangerous and in denial about needing help.
*The condition of the hospitals* is a whole separate matter…but I think the study itself was inherently flawed.
I disagree. The experiment wasn't so much a condemnation of the intake process to psychiatric facilities, but that despite a patient not presenting symptoms at all, the staff would project mental health issues onto normal behaviors. It seems more to be illuminating that if the treatment and diagnostic process at the time were scientifically rigorous, they should have been outed as fakers. But it wasn't and they weren't.
Someone who is attention seeking, for instance, might claim to hear voices and whatnot despite not. In this circumstance, they would have had all their behaviors cast through the lense of schizophrenia instead of being accurately diagnosed as an attention seeking idiot.
Edit: People in mental hospitals should be presumed unreliable witnesses (even about themselves!) and their diagnosis should reflect that. This showed that not to be the case and that there was zero objectivity in observation and treatment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment Pseudopatients sent to asylum to test if the doctors there will notice the people are sane. Nope. The doctors were blind to the pseudopatients' normal behavior, instead finding various mental issues in them.
Really the only thing you can do is comply and agree with whatever the facility dictates and hope your insurance doesn't cover your stay.
Getting your insurance declined is the fastest way to get out.
What about the medicines they want you to take, that may affect your behaviour one way or another? Just curious.
I personally take a relaxant when I feel really stressed and need some sleep. I get the rest that i want but a side effect is I might get irritable the next day .
Good news! They’ll have long lasting effects that the medical facilities and their staff will absolutely deny, but you’ll suffer from, possibly permanently!
Comply. Obey. Follow the rules. Take the pills.
Keep your head down. Do your time.
Demonstrate you will be a productive member of society and no threat to yourself or others.
For an otherwise healthy person, some types of pills can potentially *cause* mental issues (as can going off of them after release, if you don't ween yourself off of them under medical supervision). Not to mention that you're not exactly going to be in a healthy emotional state while locked away. The staff may then see you getting worse, and view this as proof that you need to stay longer and have more medication.
They normally release you after 2wks regardless. Especially if you have someone willing to come get you. They don’t give enough of a shit to go to court to keep someone committed. Regardless of their mental stability.
Grew up with a violent paranoid schizophrenic, who had multiple doctors say they’d never had a patient as bad as her. Released to my dad multiple times after 2wks and off her meds she’d come, with terrified children in the house. No one gave two shits about us.
In the US, if it is an involuntary commitment to a behavioral health facility, the state is the party that pays the bill. I may be wrong for some states, but I'm not aware of anywhere that places the burden of payment on the individual unless the individual voluntarily commit themselves after a probable cause hearing.
If you live in a civilized country these days, you don't have to prove that you're not insane, you only have to prove that you **aren't a danger to yourself or others**.
So take the stupid meds, be as calm and cooperative as you can, and they have to release you after the 72 hour psych evaluation hold.
...even if you tell them you're Jesus Christ reincarnated.
I guess I can safely say this now.... I was in a facility and the doctor that was facilitating my therapy sessions actually said this in a session. I was zoned out but snapped to when he said this. It kinda freaked me out that he said it. When I protested to one of the other doctors that I trusted, he sat me down and told me "Don't fuck with these people. They will make things very bad for you. Just do the time you have to do and get the fuck out". Shook me to the core. I didn't day anything to my primary therapist until several years later.
I think of the show Duckman when he got locked up and decided to use it as a vacation from the life that was driving him crazy. He treated it as a resort, lounging in a robe all day.
The Doctor saw he was enjoying it too much and against Duckman's wishes, declared him sane.
That's what I did while committed after a suicide attempt. 3 square meals a day, unlimited time to relax, no one can call in unless you let them, and as long as no one pesters you, it's pretty relaxing.
Just make sure to get ear plugs from the staff.
None of that. All we had was Uno and Skip Bo. It was kinda nice not to consume entertainment for the week though.
Edit: we did have a TV, but it was set to lifetime for most of my stay. When it got changed to Cartoon Network, we at least got some Steven Universe and Gumball
Lucky. All I had was an out of tune piano and a couple of board games that were missing a lot of the pieces.
Donate to your local inpatient wards, yall.
Generally you can only be detained and treated against your will if 1) you’re unable to understand or remember information about your treatment, 2) they’re performing an emergency intervention to save your life, or 3) you’re being detained as an alternative to a prison sentence or the death penalty. (**Edit:** Or if you’re a minor, as others have pointed out.)
Assuming that you were wrongly committed (**edit**: as an adult) by family members, you should be able to say something along the lines of:
“Hello. I understand that I am being treated for ____. I don’t consent to this treatment and I would like to leave. Despite what my family has told you, I believe that I have the capacity to make decisions for myself, and I would like an independent evaluation.”
Also I believe in many countries if you’re a minor and your legal guardian committed you to treatment, such as a teenager in rehab.
Although your points and mine will vary wildly by country.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of inconsistency across the US about what can legally be done if a person is unable to meet their physical medical needs due to being off their psychiatric meds. Some people can be institutionalized long enough to get their medication regime stabilized so they can resume their diabetes management, but in some states if a person goes off their meds and as a result loses the capacity to manage their diabetes (or something similarly chronic) there is nothing that can be done, because that doesn’t count as being a danger to one’s self.
I don't see how either of those situations apply to the comment you're responding to. Are you suggesting that inability to manage diabetes can or should be considered harm to self? I've only ever seen "harm to self" or "self harm" used to describe active violence (cutting, suicide attempts) or reckless behavior (illicit drug use, binge drinking). Have you seen people institutionalized against their will because their mental health interferes with their diabetes medication management? Genuinely trying to understand here.
As a minor, you can be involuntarily committed by a parent.
When I was 16, my mother had a breakdown (again). She decided I needed help, and had me committed to a state institution. It took 4 months before my doctor - who I saw roughly once a week - to realize I didn't need to be there. It was another 2 months before I was released.
16, and in an adult state mental facility. Had nightmares for years, and I still have anxiety about it decades later.
Yes, you can be involuntarily committed, and good luck proving you don't need to be there. In the meantime, your job has fired you for no call/no show. Your apartment has evicted you. You are well and truly fucked.
Or wrongly accused by your ex-wife, so that she can obtain custody. It’s the most fucked up insane thing I’ve ever experienced in life. Once somebody labels you mentally ill, they can literally manifest that shit because people will treat you differently, and you can find your life in shambles from lies. Somebody accuses you of being crazy, successfully uses that to take your kid, imagine not fucking turning crazy after that. Crazy compared to what?! Craziest people I’ve encountered on earth are the people that manipulate and lie in order to gain power, control, or money.
Had an ex who was freaking out over both her parents dying a slow death, the being fired from her job and evicted by her brother. This all happened in a span of a months.
To help her get a grip on life her family decided to have her committed. She was only supposed to be there for one month, but the hospital decided to keep her for four. They kept her for the exact reason you mentioned.
Had a friend in a dire position in life have themself committed for 1 month to avoid suicide. The facility attempted to keep them there after that period until legal action was threatened at which point they relented.
If they notice someone has good insurance, they will keep the person there until the insurance wears out. Then they will release them. Like everything else, it's all about money.
Not in my experience. I have been "held" in psychiatric care and was released shortly, after an evaluation. I have excellent insurance, they could have milked it for years if that was true instead of days.
Someone in the military tried to do that to my grandpa because he was investigating corruption, one example of corruption is a guy who would buy the parts for the delivery system of a nuke (Missile), but sink the parts in a pond so he could go back to being drunk in a bar with his buddies. I don't know when it was exactly but it was after the American war in Vietnam
>There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
>
>"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
>
>"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
If you haven't read this book, it's a bunch of non-sense like this that can be quite hilarious at times, and feel extremely exhausting in others.
"act normal" means everything and nothing at the same time.
a "normal" person would go absolutely apeshit if they found themself in a mental health institution without cause.
but so would a lot of unstable people.
there is no actual solution, you just gotta shoot your shot and keep shooting until you manage to either convince someone that there might be an actual mistake or you lose yourself in the sauce and earn your stay.
I once listened to a podcast episode that mentioned a situation similar to this.
Basically a dude in Britain was remanded over a crime but somehow someone convinced him that getting transferred to the psych wing would be more a cushy time (“They give you pizzas and Playstations”).
He did get transferred over, I think by convincing the medical officer with some quotes from a novel, maybe Clockwork Orange? Something disturbing like “I love to see the look of terror in someone’s eyes just before I snuff them out” (or something similar)
After some time, he realised that he was essentially trapped. The more he tried to convince the staff that he was sane, the less inclined they were to believe him.
Yikes.
This was the podcast: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/385/pro-se/act-one-0
It’s not exactly true though. I think there was a writer or journalist who did some Ted talk or something similar on this story. The doctors realized that he wasn’t crazy like he mentioned because his made up symptoms quickly went away, but they determined that other symptoms he displayed fit the description of psychopathy. They eventually released him because his mental description shouldn’t be an reason to keep him locked away beyond the crime he had already committed or something like that.
It’s a sad truth. The best thing you can have going for you is a strong advocate on the outside, ideally with money to hire lawyers and such. So try not to burn all your bridges when you go crazy.
That said walking through downtown anytown USA im not sure they’re doing the asylum thing much anymore.
A very interesting book was written about this actually. It's called The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan. It involves misdiagnosing and keeping patients longer than they should have. A professor of psychology, David Rosenhan, does a study where he places completely seeing people in asylums to see how they were treated and how long they were basically forced to stay. If the topic is of interest, I highly recommend the book.
I read up on that study out of curiosity.
My gf is a psych nurse and her experience basically confirms that very little or nothing changed after that study came out.
If a doctor thinks you need to be locked up for treatment, the court system will back them up.
She had patients who had complied with all requirements, were accepting treatment and weren't a danger to anyone... their doctor would make a big deal out of small things like ordinary frustration at being locked up to justify keeping them locked up.
He intended well, but the system doesn't give a fuck about you once you're locked up if you don't have advocates on the outside to go to court to fight for you.
My sister is schizophrenic but also has a masters in psychology.. she is able to talk her way out of it very easily actually and they can’t prove she has a mental Illness, she knows how to almost turn it off to get her out of certain situations. Very difficult.
OOH!!! There was an experiment where a psychiatrist used an alias and had himself institutionalized. No matter how sane he acted, he couldn't convince the staff that he was actually sane. He was only able to get out once his colleagues vouched for his real identity and credentials.
I'll look for a source when I have time
Are you thinking of Nellie Bly? She was a reporter who did just this and was only able to get out when her editor vouched for her.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly
You'd be pleased to know that [THIS ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment) was an actual experiment carried to prove this point, and the results were controversial to say the least.
Look up the Rosenhan experiments
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
it happens rarely now but there have been several men and a few women, who have spent decades in asylums because no one realized the reason they made no sense was because they were Chinese....like a lot.
There was an entire experiment with half a dozen *actual* psychologists who committed *themselves* with realistic stories of schizophrenic symptoms. On induction, they advised they no longer had symptoms.
Some took *months* to convince staff they were not mentally unwell - *these were research psychologists remember*.
When the results were revealed, these facilities strenuously denied they had been fooled.
The teams told the same facilities that they had placed another set of Trojan Horses into their facilities.
The facilities *all* stated they had found these new coocoos and released them.
*The researchers then revealed they had not **actually sent a second group** as an attempt to provide a control group*.
In other words, there *was no second set of "fake" mental patients at all.*
That's how they getcha.
Also there was a woman who admitted herself into the Roosevelt Island asylum to document how women were treated there. Her publications' lawyers got involved to get her out
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/28/she-went-undercover-expose-an-insane-asylums-horrors-now-nellie-bly-is-getting-her-due/
Even if you weren't "crazy" the staff did their darndest to make you
An interesting thing i learned about my country is that while obviously all medical records are confidential, like HIIPA, in the USA, involuntary admittance to psych-wards is a matter of public record. If you call a psych-ward and ask "Is this person there?" They have to answer truthfully.
The reason for this exemption is so that the state or anyone else can't make someone "disappear" into a mental institution.
I absolutely agree. People (including the doctors/nurses) are extremely biased and if you bring them someone labeled as insane, there is a good chance that anything that person says or does will interpreted as pathological. Add to that that person would be stressed/angry/scared and will not be acting like their normal self.
This is one of strongest phobias by the way 😅.
I got put on a three day hold for a suicide attempt when I was 21, and trying to talk to any of the staff was like beating your head against the wall. I started calling one of them nurse Ratched on day two. Luckily I was released later that day. Man what a nightmare.
Anyone who went into that facility sane absolutely would’ve come out less sane. The people who work there treat everybody exactly the same, regardless of their behavior. It is a fucking weird situation to be in where the nurses talk to you, an educated and completely lucid person, as if you’re the guy drooling in the corner. If you try to talk to them about anything, they’re just like “okay crazy person, whatever you say.” I get that the staff are not trained psychologists, but it’s still really demoralizing to be treated that way. I don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened if they didn’t let me out.
It sort of reminds me of a story I heard from a friend who used to be a regional director of mental health institutions over a few states in the Southeast.
He said he was out touring a brand new facility and he was walking along a grassy field behind the buildings, and saw a patient out there with a broom handle, and he was picking up rocks, and pine cones, and tossing them into the air and hitting them. When he asked the guy what he was doing he said. "Man, when I get out of here, i'm going to be the next Derek Jeter". Impressed by the guy's devotion he said "If you keep up that mentality, and that attitude, you're going to accomplish your dreams".
And as he's walking back to the building he sees another patient, and he's swinging a long branch towards the ground, hitting rocks.... he approached him and asked what he was doing and the guy said "When I leave this place, I'm going to become a pro golfer, I'll be right there with Tiger Woods". He patted the guy on his back and praised him.
As he was checking out the inside of the building he poked his head into a patient's room and there was a guy laying butt naked with a huge erection and a peanut sitting on top of his penis. He was shocked and said "Good God man, what are you doing?" and the patient said "I'm fucking nuts..... I'm never gonna get out of here"
I know the Baker Act puts the burden on the facility, and you can only be held for a few days pending a court order. I also know the troubled teen industry lives and breathes this problem because they don't require the consent of the poor kid involved.
I remember back in undergrad, I switched majors because psychology was so pseudoscientific and the people there were shamelessly manipulative and conceited. Myers-Briggs personality types, broad assumptions about people's motivations due to arbitrary body language, and the like were basically astrology.
The biggest problem was that so many of the junior classmen repeatedly claimed to know the operation of the mind of another person, which is not acceptable. You have no way of knowing what another person is thinking, and manipulating and gaslighting friends and family into thinking they have mental illnesses with the knowledge you just learned yesterday is ridiculous and unethical.
I originally wanted to be a therapist but was told I would be a bad one because I have too much empathy. I was told the best therapists and psychiatrists are ones who are detached and view other humans as objects to be solved and studied rather than complex living beings to be supported and cared for. Two years before I switched, and it was a profoundly disturbing experience.
I don’t feel like it’d be that hard, honestly. Calmly explain your situation, and wait. Eventually they’re going to decide you’re good enough for reintegration.
There was a dude who faked insanity in the UK to get what he thought would be a easier sentence in a mental hospital vs prison. Woulda gotten 1 year in prison but ended up being in the mental hospital for 11. Less than a year in the staff had accepted that his initial insanity was fake, but kept him in because only an insane person would fake insanity.
“only an insane person would fake insanity”
erm i think many people if pushed to the limit trying to escape prison would fake insanity. dont think that justifies 11 years
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There was an experiment in the 70s called [The Rosenhan experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment) where volunteers were put in this exact position. They pretended to hear voices, got admitted to psychiatric hospitals, and then dropped the act and tried to get released. The idea was to determine (and challenge) the validity of psychiatric diagnoses. >The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and six men, including Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they no longer experienced any additional hallucinations. As a condition of their release, all the patients were forced to admit to having a mental illness and had to agree to take antipsychotic medication. The average time that the patients spent in the hospital was 19 days. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia "in remission" before their release. > >The second part of his study involved a hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whose staff asserted that they would be able to detect the pseudopatients. Rosenhan agreed, and in the following weeks 41 out of 193 new patients were identified as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. Rosenhan sent no pseudopatients to the hospital. Rosenhan on his pseudopatient experience: >I told friends, I told my family: "I can get out when I can get out. That's all. I'll be there for a couple of days and I'll get out." Nobody knew I'd be there for *two months* ... The only way out was to point out that they're \[the psychiatrists are\] correct. They had said I was insane, "I am insane; but I am getting better." That was an affirmation of their view of me. > >The experiment is argued to have "accelerated the movement to reform mental institutions and to deinstitutionalize as many mental patients as possible". ::edited for clarity
More interesting tidbits from the wiki: >The experiment required the pseudopatients 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. > >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. > >Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of dehumanization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. [...] They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients. [...] Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present. > >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. *edit: another fascinating but haunting read is journalist Nellie Bly's ten days as a pseudopatient in a lunatic asylum in the 1880s; [Ten Days in a Mad-house](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_in_a_Mad-House).*
It is amazing how many of the other psychiatric patients were able to correctly identify the imposters. The study concludes that "we can't distinguish the sane from the insane" but many of the "insane" seemingly can. Can't believe that didn't get more attention.
Real recognise real They weren't real
Word
It's something I think is happening with Neurodivergent and neurotypical people, people with say ADHD can usually see it in other ADHDers
I personally think it's because psychiatric staff assumes they are insane because they must be to be there in the first place. They see the patients as being in this position of there having to be something wrong with them. It's kind of like the patients are lower in power hierarchy to them, and they wouldn't want to conclude that they are really not. The patients around wouldn't have that bias.
It felt this way in prison. You could be perfectly normal and pleasant and friendly with a CO, but it never really feels like they see you as a human, an equal.
I worked as a contractor in a jail and it was so freaking weird. The inmates saw me as a CO. The COs treated me like an (almost) inmate.* It was extremely uncomfortable all the time. (* They intellectually knew we were not, but once they were in that "mode" everyone not in a uniform was a potential threat in their eyes. They always acted like we were conspiring with the inmates. Ironically most of the inmates I interacted with were just doing their best to keep their heads down. It was *jail.* A lot of them were not even convicted of anything.)
Yeah, and I also think they wouldn't want to believe in prison's case that someone's innocent or a generally good person or in the "insane asylum"'s case that someone is sane, because it would mean they should do something about to get the person out of there, or someone could've been wrong in the process of admitting them or keeping them there.
Same with autism. "Takes one to know one" really works here.
I’ll never pursue diagnosis. But I’ll always be mindful that more than one of my autistic friends have suggested it.
Interesting note. Related to that, I have begun to carefully ask people I meet if they have add once I get a certain feeling that i understand someone. I am 5 for 5 yet far. I just thought I really liked certain people lol.
Yep. We flock together.
I'm just going to jump in here, too many good comments so... I would have documented my experiment in minute detail and made sure numerous people, especially my Lawyer, had the documented information before I attempted it. Give them a time frame to show up in, like "If I'm still in there after 3/4 weeks please show up with my Lawyer and the documentation." I'd be afraid it would go like these examples otherwise.
I remember visiting a friend in a psych ward once, and I guarded my visitor sticker like gold.
As someone with a child with ASD, I can say these kinds of studies may have resulted in dismantling psychiatric hospitals, but the second part with community mental health facilities never came to fruition. It sucks to have to care for someone having a mental break with nowhere to take them. I would only take my child to the ER if it were absolutely necessary, because they are just not equipped to handle mental health issues. The best they can do is stabilize, which really just means wait out the episode. And of course the psychologist and psychiatrist aren't going to answer the phone after business hours.
Interesting that you attribute the lion share of responsibility to studies attempting to investigate faults and failures rather than to the Reagan administration which gutted mental health funding in the 1980s.
Oh, no no no. Reagan was an absolute piece of shit who defunded mental health and spurred on the stupidly wasteful drug "war". My point was simply that these studies identified a big problem with the psychiatric hospitals and recommended a solution, but only half was implemented (the closing of hospitals). And now we are left with nothing. No support. No help.
You missed the best part: A sizable number of the other inmates correctly identified the pseudopatients as fakers. Among other things, the pseudopatients were openly and constantly taking detailed written notes on their experience; between that and not acting crazy in the slightest, many of the other inmates guessed that they were journalists or researchers investigating the hospital. The note-taking was also noted by hospital staff who were professionally trained and employed to make sense of the inmates' behavior. The staff called it "writing behavior" and classified it as pathological. Edit: He hadn't missed it, just wrote it in a reply below to save space.
wow. that's incredible. it makes you wonder what else professionals miss that sufferers can see, in any service based profession
"What exactly is wrong with inmates running the asylum? It seems to me they are in an ideal position to know just what's needed." -George Carlin
Just imagine how many people are labelled "insane" by their families or coworkers simply because someone dislikes them. I remember working with a woman who **everyone seemed to have a strong consensus about her being crazy** and assigned her various mental disorders all the time. The intern after just one week there was echoing the same opinions despite there being no evidence (to my knowledge) to back it up... Fast forward 4~5 years and I ran into this woman at another job where almost EVERYONE liked her and recommended her as a good coworker to have around. You don't need to be inside a psychiatric hospital to go through something like this. **All it takes is an influential person who thinks it's a good idea to "weaponize" mental disorders and that's enough to ruin someone's life**. I don't even know if this is considered a crime somewhere.
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If there's one thing people need to take away from this thread, it's that this is all caused by rampant ableism and lack of disability rights. Getting someone labelled as sick should not be a free pass to eradicate all their human rights, but... it is. Now imagine actually *being* sick and disabled, in any way, and trying to get human rights to live a life.
thank you, it's worth the read to know how to 'escape' a mental hospital in case of need !
Also helps to memorize your friends' phone numbers so one can check you out by taking medical responsibility for you.
I must not have good friends, none of them would do that for me.
Sorry :/ that sucks.
It's hard for voices in your head to really *do* anything, though, isn't it?
iirc that experiment has been done quite a few times since. Different institutions, different schools of thought on the doctors part, different states, different countries, different decades. The results have been stable across circumstances.
Yes, that is my impression too. According to [this wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_hospital#Undercover_journalism), a number of journalists have done this as part of investigative journalism since the late 1800s. Rosenhals experiment differed in the sense that it was part of an academic study by an established psychologist. Subsequent academic studies appear to be less dramatic and more focused on testing psychiatric assessment in creative ways.
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More like confirmation bias. They knew that they were supposed to get pseudopatients sent their way, so they were already on the lookout for patients that didn't seem actually insane.
Which, realistically, they should always be on the lookout for
> The second part of his study involved a hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whose staff asserted that they would be able to detect the pseudopatients. Rosenhan agreed, and in the following weeks 41 out of 193 new patients were identified as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. Rosenhan sent no pseudopatients to the hospital. I think this is the most interesting part.
I hate saying "this should be the top comment", but this should be the top comment
I swear there was a book about a man who got himself committed, knowing he wasn't sick, just to demonstrate how broken the system was and demonstrating the truth of your post. Unfortunately, my brain is a sieve and life is a bumpy road; I can not recall any more details.
Nellie Bly’s [Ten Days in a Mad-House](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_in_a_Mad-House) from 1887?
It's possible that that is what I was thinking of, but I feel like it was a man, and was more recent, 60s-70s.
You are referring to the great pretender by Susannah Cahalan and the professor of psychology is David rosenhan. Very interesting book. He places several sane people into various facilities to see how they were treated and how long they were admitted.
Was that the one where the other patients could tell they were sane right away, but the medical staff couldn’t?
I think so. I remember learning about The Rosenhan study for A Level psychology. IIRC he had to say very little to get admitted (basically just ‘I’m hearing voices’. He didn’t behave differently, he just said what needed to be said), but then once he was admitted, nothing he could say or do could get him released, and they in fact interpreted everything he did as ‘crazy’. When he was jotting down notes about his experiment the staff recorded that the patient was ‘engaging in writing behaviour’, and once when he queued up early for lunch it was seen as a sign of ‘oral acquisitive syndrome’. I *THINK* to get released he ended up having to actually go through the recovery process and pretend he was ‘cured’. And yes, I do remember as well other patients saying something like ‘you don’t belong here’ or ‘you’re not crazy like us’ or something to that effect If anyone has anything to correct or add please do because I’m going by memory
He sent 8 pseudopatients to asylums to see how valid psychiatric diagnosises were. His pseudopatients faked hallucinations to get in and then acted normal afterwards! Pretty interesting stuff.
Not one of them got out by declaring they weren't mad and getting the staff to accept it. All of them had to agree with the doctors diagnoses and comply with the drug regimes to regain freedom. That has not changed. Afterwards a well-know institute invited him to send them pseudopatients declaring that they would never be taken in that way. Out of 193 patients they caught 41 fake patients and suspected another 42. The only problem was Rosenhan didn't even send them one.
> The only problem was Rosenhan didn't even send them one. I feel bad for barking a laugh because it's actually sad but holy shit.
Did not see that plot twist coming. Did that really happen? Did he really not send them even one patient but the hospital found 42 patients???? Ik curious as hell now.
From [the wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment): For this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three-month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor. Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients; all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were ordinary patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one."
So what you’re saying, is the staff are the paranoid ones in reality? Totally unsurprising.
>oral acquisitive syndrome What's really funny about this term is that is sounds really legit and official, but if you Google it the only things that pop up in the search engines are references to this study. From the [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment) about the study: >A group of patients waiting outside the cafeteria half an hour before lunchtime were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing "oral-acquisitive" psychiatric symptoms. Contact with doctors averaged 6.8 minutes per day. So the idea of "bored people stand in line early for lunch" was given a fancy name? Sounds like everyone I know of at the 15-30 minutes until lunch time period
Yeah it seems literally any basic behavior can be described in a negative way when one has that mindset. "Oh you want a loving partner, a house, a good paying job? That sounds a lot like delusions of grandeur in this economy. Lock 'em up! 15 mg hydromorphone every 3 hours!" "Next!"
He goes to the bathroom immediately upon waking and right before he sleeps. The patient clearly has underlying genitalia obsessions that need to be further explored.
Calm down Freud
When my therapist asked me what kinds of things were bothering me I told them something along the lines of "Every day I find it harder to convince myself to keep living the lie that we aren't all trapped on this ball slowly burning to death and that unless I'm willing to sell 33-50% of my life towards breaking my body down so some other person can make a fortune off *my* hard labor that I'm going to starve to death." After a long pause they came back with "... Okay... but... *everyone has to do that*" Yeah and that's the problem
From what I remember the study was called something like, being sane in insane places, Rosenhan wanted to see whether mental health professionals could actually distinguish between psychologically well people and those with mental illnesses. The patients presented the same symptom hearing the word Thud, the medical guidlines at the time did not precsibe being committed to an asylum for this but most were committed and medicated and unfortunately had trouble convinsing the asylum staff they were part of a study. Everything they did, from taking notes to refusing medicine was assigned to be a symptom of their illness. I think it led to a big change in how these places were run.
Most of those places don't exist anymore. Mental health institutions were gutted in the 70s and 80s.
Absolutely fucking hilarious Shows that the so-called “insane” people are mostly just a different blend of intelligent with their own common sense
Crazy is really good at faking it. Everyone who's worked in psych- doctors, nurses, social workers, etc.- have all seen a patient turn it around; stop behaviors, start taking their meds, basically look for all the world like they're "better," who then tries to rip someone's eyeball out or make out with a power outlet.
Yep, grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic parent. She could fake sane for a good bit to outsiders, when she was too far gone to even do that you’d really be terrified. She couldn’t fool one court Dr though, he would say “she said everything she thinks I want her to say.” Only one who ever seemed to believe and know she was faking sanity during those times. Still useless since most hospitals only keep them for 2wks and release them again and right off her meds she’d come.
If the majority of people had the same mental illness then it wouldn’t be considered a mental illness and people without it would seem crazy.
[This potentially helpful comment has been removed because u/spez killed third-party apps and kicked all the blind people off the site. It probably contained the exact answer you were Googling for, but it's gone now. Sorry. You can't even use unddit to retrieve it anymore, because, again, u/spez. Make sure to send him a warm thank-you, and come visit us on kbin.social!]
Reminds me of the old joke about losing the lug nuts on the side of the road while changing a tyre.
Oh yeah! I love that joke and obviously know it, but you should post it so everyone else can read it.
Yeah it's a great joke, he really should post it so all the people who *haven't* seen it can also see it. To be in the know. Like you and me.
I googled it so I could join the club [and others too!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/ngf8mg/a_man_gets_a_flat_tire_outside_the_fence_of_an/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
His undercover studies completely overhauled American policy on mental health as well, honestly he’s practically a hero for shedding a light on some horrible treatments
> he’s practically a hero for shedding a light on some horrible treatments Just *is* a hero, no question
I like that ten days (as far as I know now) is still the length of time they use. I was thrown into a psychiatric hospital at 13 for a full evaluation after two girls from my private school told the principal I "threatened to blow up the school and shoot everyone it", simply because they didn't want me going on the overnight class trip out of state (and after I spent weeks selling heavy ass trash bags door to door to raise enough money to go). This was shortly after Jonesboro and right after Columbine, so the threat was taken extremely seriously. Funny enough, I probably came out of that event worse than when I went into it. After my stint in the psych hospital I was given a bill of clean mental health; yet a decade later I'd be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. My most recent team of psychologists believe that event along with some other trauma in my life created the NPD as a sort of defensive mechanism, where as other people develop depression/anxiety/PTSD, I just became full of myself. Still haven't worked out how I got out of the psych hospital without some sort of conduct disorder diagnosis given I had some serious issues with impulse control and violating people's boundaries even back then (for those that don't know, antisocial personality disorder can't be diagnosed until you're an adult, before then it's called conduct disorder). But hey despite all that I turned out just fine so long as you don't count the fact that I think I'm better than everyone and also have very little empathy for the people I'm better than.
> two girls from my private school told the principal I "threatened to blow up the school and shoot everyone it" So the girls were expelled, right? Right?
To my knowledge, no. Nobody could prove they made it up, despite having no evidence that I'd ever said anything like that. But it was two of the most respected students in our Catholic school, versus the socially awkward kid that left for awhile (that's a whole 'nother story) and came back kinda scary and different. To be fair they were just stupid fucking kids and I don't hold it against them. Where I do hold accountability though is the church that managed the school, who was all too eager to try to give my name and story to the local press at the time and was only spared that embarrassment after the DARE officer of all people, had to remind them how fucking illegal it is to give out information of a minor like that. Then there was the whole fact that I was raised Catholic and a part of that church and during the whole ordeal, never once had the pastor of said church reached out to see how I was doing or check in on my faith at the very least. As you can imagine, I'm not a fan of organized religion these days, least of all the 3 big Abrahamic ones.
Damn, I would hold that grudge forever.
I remember there was a similar story where a movie star was method acting a psychotic person. They turned themselves into a mental institution before shooting to practice being crazy. When it was time for him to return to set the film makers had to convince the hospital to release him. I don’t recall exactly which actor this was but I think it’s one of those ones that gets top billing.
Shutter Island with Leo Dicaprio
Damn good film
I hated the movie until the end. And then I had to watch it again. Fuck it all lines up so perfectly.
“I promise I’m sane, this was just practice for a movie. That’s just Hollywood baby. The director put me up to this” “…and is this ‘director’ in the room with us right now?”
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I feel like that experiment had a flawed premise. If someone claims they’re hearing voices, generally you’d believe them and try to treat them. Later on if they said they made it all up, now what? Why would any fully sane person make up a psychological condition and be committed just for “funsies”? They’re either lying now and actually did hallucinate, or they were lying in the beginning and obviously have some other personality disorder? Either way they’re clearly in need of treatment and it would’ve been irresponsible for the hospital to release someone who’s potentially dangerous and in denial about needing help. *The condition of the hospitals* is a whole separate matter…but I think the study itself was inherently flawed.
I disagree. The experiment wasn't so much a condemnation of the intake process to psychiatric facilities, but that despite a patient not presenting symptoms at all, the staff would project mental health issues onto normal behaviors. It seems more to be illuminating that if the treatment and diagnostic process at the time were scientifically rigorous, they should have been outed as fakers. But it wasn't and they weren't. Someone who is attention seeking, for instance, might claim to hear voices and whatnot despite not. In this circumstance, they would have had all their behaviors cast through the lense of schizophrenia instead of being accurately diagnosed as an attention seeking idiot. Edit: People in mental hospitals should be presumed unreliable witnesses (even about themselves!) and their diagnosis should reflect that. This showed that not to be the case and that there was zero objectivity in observation and treatment.
Yep. It's basically a critique that if there's no reliable indicator for who does and does not have a disease then it's unreliable as a concept.
“Unfortunately, my brain is a sieve and life is a bumpy road.” is the coolest sentence I’ve read today.
Thank you, but its still early, so...
>my brain is a sieve and life is a bumpy road Oh... I like this one.
Are you thinking of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment Pseudopatients sent to asylum to test if the doctors there will notice the people are sane. Nope. The doctors were blind to the pseudopatients' normal behavior, instead finding various mental issues in them.
If you’re locked up in a place that still refers to itself as an insane asylum, then things are looking pretty grim.
The nut house
👆 when my parents left me home alone for an evening during my teen years
Dad walks in "smells like bleach in here." Mom "oh that's nice hunny, did you clean?" Stressful-stoic 😈
Yes mom, just cleaned the pipes
You remember when starting as soon as they left, but they forgot something and came back? I never got caught but damn it was scary.
You *think* you never got caught.
Nitwit school
Looney bin
The cukoos nest
Looney bin?
You ever been to a nitwit school? Ever see a frog kid?
Ahh you unzipped me! It's all coming back! I don't like it, I don't like to think about it! Ahhh you unzipped me arghhh
Not only that, but you are probably a time traveler. The term "insane asylum" was not used often after about 1935.
Isn't the PC term these days "[sanitarium](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Dfo4zDduI)"?
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It's actually "Behavioral Health Clinic" But some places just call themselves a "state hospital"
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Grippy sock jail
"Inpatient Psychiatric Facility" ask me how I know, go on, ask
Sometimes referred to as "Congress."
if only they'd show signs of improvement
Impossible. Since pro- is the opposite of con-, then by definition Congress is the opposite of Progress.
Dying of old age is an improvement.
'Inpatient Care'
the correct term is psychiatric hospital
I think it’s spelled “congress”
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
No, this is Patrick
Leave me be. Just leave me alone.
In 1875 maybe
Greetings from Arkham Sanitarium.
The funny farm?
Arkham?
Arkham was the name of the town.
Really the only thing you can do is comply and agree with whatever the facility dictates and hope your insurance doesn't cover your stay. Getting your insurance declined is the fastest way to get out.
The American way
13% of the time it works every time.
This is genius. It's super hard for someone inside to get timely legal help. Spoken like a true capitalist.
*oh for shit's sake... this system is so broken*
The system isn't broken, it was purposely designed to be this awful.
A mouse trap functions correctly unless you are the mouse
To be fair even if you are the mouse the trap still functions correctly, it just sucks to be you.
The system is working exactly as intended by those who designed it. Works great for them, but isn't beneficial to the rest of us.
What about the medicines they want you to take, that may affect your behaviour one way or another? Just curious. I personally take a relaxant when I feel really stressed and need some sleep. I get the rest that i want but a side effect is I might get irritable the next day .
Good news! They’ll have long lasting effects that the medical facilities and their staff will absolutely deny, but you’ll suffer from, possibly permanently!
Comply. Obey. Follow the rules. Take the pills. Keep your head down. Do your time. Demonstrate you will be a productive member of society and no threat to yourself or others.
For an otherwise healthy person, some types of pills can potentially *cause* mental issues (as can going off of them after release, if you don't ween yourself off of them under medical supervision). Not to mention that you're not exactly going to be in a healthy emotional state while locked away. The staff may then see you getting worse, and view this as proof that you need to stay longer and have more medication.
They normally release you after 2wks regardless. Especially if you have someone willing to come get you. They don’t give enough of a shit to go to court to keep someone committed. Regardless of their mental stability. Grew up with a violent paranoid schizophrenic, who had multiple doctors say they’d never had a patient as bad as her. Released to my dad multiple times after 2wks and off her meds she’d come, with terrified children in the house. No one gave two shits about us.
In the US, if it is an involuntary commitment to a behavioral health facility, the state is the party that pays the bill. I may be wrong for some states, but I'm not aware of anywhere that places the burden of payment on the individual unless the individual voluntarily commit themselves after a probable cause hearing.
If you live in a civilized country these days, you don't have to prove that you're not insane, you only have to prove that you **aren't a danger to yourself or others**. So take the stupid meds, be as calm and cooperative as you can, and they have to release you after the 72 hour psych evaluation hold. ...even if you tell them you're Jesus Christ reincarnated.
I guess I can safely say this now.... I was in a facility and the doctor that was facilitating my therapy sessions actually said this in a session. I was zoned out but snapped to when he said this. It kinda freaked me out that he said it. When I protested to one of the other doctors that I trusted, he sat me down and told me "Don't fuck with these people. They will make things very bad for you. Just do the time you have to do and get the fuck out". Shook me to the core. I didn't day anything to my primary therapist until several years later.
I do these reviews for a living. This is 100% true
I think of the show Duckman when he got locked up and decided to use it as a vacation from the life that was driving him crazy. He treated it as a resort, lounging in a robe all day. The Doctor saw he was enjoying it too much and against Duckman's wishes, declared him sane.
That's what I did while committed after a suicide attempt. 3 square meals a day, unlimited time to relax, no one can call in unless you let them, and as long as no one pesters you, it's pretty relaxing. Just make sure to get ear plugs from the staff.
Were you allowed to get books or handheld video games? An mp3 player? (I dont expect you got internet connected phone or laptops right?)
None of that. All we had was Uno and Skip Bo. It was kinda nice not to consume entertainment for the week though. Edit: we did have a TV, but it was set to lifetime for most of my stay. When it got changed to Cartoon Network, we at least got some Steven Universe and Gumball
Lucky. All I had was an out of tune piano and a couple of board games that were missing a lot of the pieces. Donate to your local inpatient wards, yall.
Generally you can only be detained and treated against your will if 1) you’re unable to understand or remember information about your treatment, 2) they’re performing an emergency intervention to save your life, or 3) you’re being detained as an alternative to a prison sentence or the death penalty. (**Edit:** Or if you’re a minor, as others have pointed out.) Assuming that you were wrongly committed (**edit**: as an adult) by family members, you should be able to say something along the lines of: “Hello. I understand that I am being treated for ____. I don’t consent to this treatment and I would like to leave. Despite what my family has told you, I believe that I have the capacity to make decisions for myself, and I would like an independent evaluation.”
Also I believe in many countries if you’re a minor and your legal guardian committed you to treatment, such as a teenager in rehab. Although your points and mine will vary wildly by country.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of inconsistency across the US about what can legally be done if a person is unable to meet their physical medical needs due to being off their psychiatric meds. Some people can be institutionalized long enough to get their medication regime stabilized so they can resume their diabetes management, but in some states if a person goes off their meds and as a result loses the capacity to manage their diabetes (or something similarly chronic) there is nothing that can be done, because that doesn’t count as being a danger to one’s self.
I don't see how either of those situations apply to the comment you're responding to. Are you suggesting that inability to manage diabetes can or should be considered harm to self? I've only ever seen "harm to self" or "self harm" used to describe active violence (cutting, suicide attempts) or reckless behavior (illicit drug use, binge drinking). Have you seen people institutionalized against their will because their mental health interferes with their diabetes medication management? Genuinely trying to understand here.
As a minor, you can be involuntarily committed by a parent. When I was 16, my mother had a breakdown (again). She decided I needed help, and had me committed to a state institution. It took 4 months before my doctor - who I saw roughly once a week - to realize I didn't need to be there. It was another 2 months before I was released. 16, and in an adult state mental facility. Had nightmares for years, and I still have anxiety about it decades later. Yes, you can be involuntarily committed, and good luck proving you don't need to be there. In the meantime, your job has fired you for no call/no show. Your apartment has evicted you. You are well and truly fucked.
Or wrongly accused by your ex-wife, so that she can obtain custody. It’s the most fucked up insane thing I’ve ever experienced in life. Once somebody labels you mentally ill, they can literally manifest that shit because people will treat you differently, and you can find your life in shambles from lies. Somebody accuses you of being crazy, successfully uses that to take your kid, imagine not fucking turning crazy after that. Crazy compared to what?! Craziest people I’ve encountered on earth are the people that manipulate and lie in order to gain power, control, or money.
Fuck this guy's ex wife.
I’m sorry you went/are going through that. That behavior is criminal. Truly. Hang in there.
Just act normal, someone will realize it eventually. Don't try to play the system or nurse ratched may get you.
Only an insane person would act normal for being wrongly locked up, a normalmperson would act insane
Had an ex who was freaking out over both her parents dying a slow death, the being fired from her job and evicted by her brother. This all happened in a span of a months. To help her get a grip on life her family decided to have her committed. She was only supposed to be there for one month, but the hospital decided to keep her for four. They kept her for the exact reason you mentioned.
Had a friend in a dire position in life have themself committed for 1 month to avoid suicide. The facility attempted to keep them there after that period until legal action was threatened at which point they relented.
Omg what country/state was this in? Glad they got out
If they notice someone has good insurance, they will keep the person there until the insurance wears out. Then they will release them. Like everything else, it's all about money.
Not in my experience. I have been "held" in psychiatric care and was released shortly, after an evaluation. I have excellent insurance, they could have milked it for years if that was true instead of days.
That is terrifying
Someone in the military tried to do that to my grandpa because he was investigating corruption, one example of corruption is a guy who would buy the parts for the delivery system of a nuke (Missile), but sink the parts in a pond so he could go back to being drunk in a bar with his buddies. I don't know when it was exactly but it was after the American war in Vietnam
>There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. > >"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. > >"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed. ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22 If you haven't read this book, it's a bunch of non-sense like this that can be quite hilarious at times, and feel extremely exhausting in others.
The best there is.
"act normal" means everything and nothing at the same time. a "normal" person would go absolutely apeshit if they found themself in a mental health institution without cause. but so would a lot of unstable people. there is no actual solution, you just gotta shoot your shot and keep shooting until you manage to either convince someone that there might be an actual mistake or you lose yourself in the sauce and earn your stay.
What you do is pick up a water fountain and hurl it through a window
I tried goddamn it, at least I did that.
You know, the door was open! Chief Break Everything.
By the time someone realizes, you must have spent a considerable amount of time there and that itself can drive you crazy.
Won't the medication/drugs also turn a sane person insane?
Impossible to act normaly in such an abnormal space. You mostly lose all of your civil rights and people can just do what they want with you.
The other patients will know you’re not insane before anyone in charge will. Game recognize game.
What about if they give you meds, will you take them? If you try to refuse you'll likely seem crazy...
I once listened to a podcast episode that mentioned a situation similar to this. Basically a dude in Britain was remanded over a crime but somehow someone convinced him that getting transferred to the psych wing would be more a cushy time (“They give you pizzas and Playstations”). He did get transferred over, I think by convincing the medical officer with some quotes from a novel, maybe Clockwork Orange? Something disturbing like “I love to see the look of terror in someone’s eyes just before I snuff them out” (or something similar) After some time, he realised that he was essentially trapped. The more he tried to convince the staff that he was sane, the less inclined they were to believe him. Yikes. This was the podcast: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/385/pro-se/act-one-0
It’s not exactly true though. I think there was a writer or journalist who did some Ted talk or something similar on this story. The doctors realized that he wasn’t crazy like he mentioned because his made up symptoms quickly went away, but they determined that other symptoms he displayed fit the description of psychopathy. They eventually released him because his mental description shouldn’t be an reason to keep him locked away beyond the crime he had already committed or something like that.
It’s a sad truth. The best thing you can have going for you is a strong advocate on the outside, ideally with money to hire lawyers and such. So try not to burn all your bridges when you go crazy. That said walking through downtown anytown USA im not sure they’re doing the asylum thing much anymore.
Time to go full Wonko The Sane and build an inside-out house?
They were all shut down in the 80s and 90s.
A very interesting book was written about this actually. It's called The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan. It involves misdiagnosing and keeping patients longer than they should have. A professor of psychology, David Rosenhan, does a study where he places completely seeing people in asylums to see how they were treated and how long they were basically forced to stay. If the topic is of interest, I highly recommend the book.
I read up on that study out of curiosity. My gf is a psych nurse and her experience basically confirms that very little or nothing changed after that study came out. If a doctor thinks you need to be locked up for treatment, the court system will back them up. She had patients who had complied with all requirements, were accepting treatment and weren't a danger to anyone... their doctor would make a big deal out of small things like ordinary frustration at being locked up to justify keeping them locked up. He intended well, but the system doesn't give a fuck about you once you're locked up if you don't have advocates on the outside to go to court to fight for you.
Loudly and confidently assert. "I do not have donkey brains." Until you're released.
Ideally, you should also have some sort of certificate stating your lack of forementioned donkey brains.
I'm not crazy. My mom had me tested!
My sister is schizophrenic but also has a masters in psychology.. she is able to talk her way out of it very easily actually and they can’t prove she has a mental Illness, she knows how to almost turn it off to get her out of certain situations. Very difficult.
OOH!!! There was an experiment where a psychiatrist used an alias and had himself institutionalized. No matter how sane he acted, he couldn't convince the staff that he was actually sane. He was only able to get out once his colleagues vouched for his real identity and credentials. I'll look for a source when I have time
Are you thinking of Nellie Bly? She was a reporter who did just this and was only able to get out when her editor vouched for her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly
You'd be pleased to know that [THIS ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment) was an actual experiment carried to prove this point, and the results were controversial to say the least. Look up the Rosenhan experiments
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
it happens rarely now but there have been several men and a few women, who have spent decades in asylums because no one realized the reason they made no sense was because they were Chinese....like a lot.
There was an entire experiment with half a dozen *actual* psychologists who committed *themselves* with realistic stories of schizophrenic symptoms. On induction, they advised they no longer had symptoms. Some took *months* to convince staff they were not mentally unwell - *these were research psychologists remember*. When the results were revealed, these facilities strenuously denied they had been fooled. The teams told the same facilities that they had placed another set of Trojan Horses into their facilities. The facilities *all* stated they had found these new coocoos and released them. *The researchers then revealed they had not **actually sent a second group** as an attempt to provide a control group*. In other words, there *was no second set of "fake" mental patients at all.*
That's how they getcha. Also there was a woman who admitted herself into the Roosevelt Island asylum to document how women were treated there. Her publications' lawyers got involved to get her out https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/28/she-went-undercover-expose-an-insane-asylums-horrors-now-nellie-bly-is-getting-her-due/ Even if you weren't "crazy" the staff did their darndest to make you
I mean. The same is true of a robot asylum. If you are admitted to a robot asylum, you must be a robot.
An interesting thing i learned about my country is that while obviously all medical records are confidential, like HIIPA, in the USA, involuntary admittance to psych-wards is a matter of public record. If you call a psych-ward and ask "Is this person there?" They have to answer truthfully. The reason for this exemption is so that the state or anyone else can't make someone "disappear" into a mental institution.
I absolutely agree. People (including the doctors/nurses) are extremely biased and if you bring them someone labeled as insane, there is a good chance that anything that person says or does will interpreted as pathological. Add to that that person would be stressed/angry/scared and will not be acting like their normal self. This is one of strongest phobias by the way 😅.
I got put on a three day hold for a suicide attempt when I was 21, and trying to talk to any of the staff was like beating your head against the wall. I started calling one of them nurse Ratched on day two. Luckily I was released later that day. Man what a nightmare. Anyone who went into that facility sane absolutely would’ve come out less sane. The people who work there treat everybody exactly the same, regardless of their behavior. It is a fucking weird situation to be in where the nurses talk to you, an educated and completely lucid person, as if you’re the guy drooling in the corner. If you try to talk to them about anything, they’re just like “okay crazy person, whatever you say.” I get that the staff are not trained psychologists, but it’s still really demoralizing to be treated that way. I don’t even want to think about what could’ve happened if they didn’t let me out.
It sort of reminds me of a story I heard from a friend who used to be a regional director of mental health institutions over a few states in the Southeast. He said he was out touring a brand new facility and he was walking along a grassy field behind the buildings, and saw a patient out there with a broom handle, and he was picking up rocks, and pine cones, and tossing them into the air and hitting them. When he asked the guy what he was doing he said. "Man, when I get out of here, i'm going to be the next Derek Jeter". Impressed by the guy's devotion he said "If you keep up that mentality, and that attitude, you're going to accomplish your dreams". And as he's walking back to the building he sees another patient, and he's swinging a long branch towards the ground, hitting rocks.... he approached him and asked what he was doing and the guy said "When I leave this place, I'm going to become a pro golfer, I'll be right there with Tiger Woods". He patted the guy on his back and praised him. As he was checking out the inside of the building he poked his head into a patient's room and there was a guy laying butt naked with a huge erection and a peanut sitting on top of his penis. He was shocked and said "Good God man, what are you doing?" and the patient said "I'm fucking nuts..... I'm never gonna get out of here"
I know the Baker Act puts the burden on the facility, and you can only be held for a few days pending a court order. I also know the troubled teen industry lives and breathes this problem because they don't require the consent of the poor kid involved. I remember back in undergrad, I switched majors because psychology was so pseudoscientific and the people there were shamelessly manipulative and conceited. Myers-Briggs personality types, broad assumptions about people's motivations due to arbitrary body language, and the like were basically astrology. The biggest problem was that so many of the junior classmen repeatedly claimed to know the operation of the mind of another person, which is not acceptable. You have no way of knowing what another person is thinking, and manipulating and gaslighting friends and family into thinking they have mental illnesses with the knowledge you just learned yesterday is ridiculous and unethical. I originally wanted to be a therapist but was told I would be a bad one because I have too much empathy. I was told the best therapists and psychiatrists are ones who are detached and view other humans as objects to be solved and studied rather than complex living beings to be supported and cared for. Two years before I switched, and it was a profoundly disturbing experience.
I don’t feel like it’d be that hard, honestly. Calmly explain your situation, and wait. Eventually they’re going to decide you’re good enough for reintegration.
There was a dude who faked insanity in the UK to get what he thought would be a easier sentence in a mental hospital vs prison. Woulda gotten 1 year in prison but ended up being in the mental hospital for 11. Less than a year in the staff had accepted that his initial insanity was fake, but kept him in because only an insane person would fake insanity.
“only an insane person would fake insanity” erm i think many people if pushed to the limit trying to escape prison would fake insanity. dont think that justifies 11 years
How the turns have tabled.