The great pretender : the undercover mission that changed our understanding of madness / Susannah Cahalan.
- Cahalan, Susannah
- Date:
- 2020
- Books
About this work
Description
For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness - how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people - clinically sane members of society - went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd 'proven' themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan's explosive new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today?-- Provided by publisher.
Publication/Creation
Physical description
Contributors
Notes
Bibliographic information
Languages
Subjects
- Mental illnessDiagnosis
- Mental illnessTreatment
- Psychiatric hospital careUnited StatesEvaluation
- Mental health servicesUnited States
- PsychiatryResearch
- Mental health services
- Mental Disordersdiagnosis
- Psychiatryhistory
- Hospitals, Psychiatrichistory
- Mental Disordersdrug therapy
- Mental Health Serviceshistory
- Attitude of Health Personnelhistory
- Research Design
- Mental Disorderstherapy
- United States
- Rosenhan, David L.
Where to find it
Location Status History of MedicinePP /CAHOpen shelves
Permanent link
Identifiers
ISBN
- 9781838851415
- 1838851410
- 1838851445