My madness is sacred, do not touch it (Salvador Dalí)
In January 1973, psychologist David Rosenhan revealed the results of an experiment he had been carrying out in order to demonstrate the validity of psychiatric diagnosis and the resulting admission to psychiatric institutions. To this end, Professor Rosenhan managed to introduce nine false patients – volunteers and his colleagues – into different American psychiatric institutions claiming to suffer auditory hallucinations – they said they heard the sound “thud” -, an onomatopoeia in the English language that represents the sound made by an undetermined object when it falls, thus achieving admission for an average of nineteen days.
The only way these volunteers or false patients managed to be discharged was by agreeing with the psychiatrists, admitting to suffering from the schizophrenia that they were diagnosed with, pretending to be cured in order to finally be able to be discharged or released after treatment with antipsychotic drugs.
This experiment was a real disaster for psychiatry, which suffered a hard setback. Until then, psychiatric professionals had enjoyed an unshakable reputation in the golden age of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, which dominated not only the fields of health care but also politics and economics.
The response of many of these institutions was to challenge Rosenhan to repeat the experiment and send false patients to their hospitals again, and this time they would be detected. Rosenhan agreed, and a couple of months later, the hospitals that had requested the experiment be repeated triumphantly declared that they had detected a total of 41 false patients, to which Rosenhan replied that he had not sent a single false patient to any of those institutions.
Of course, psychiatry has evolved a lot since the 1970s, and from the perspective of the most cynical of the 21st century, Rosenhan's experiment is not important because it called into question the psychiatric methodology of his time. Perhaps its relevance lies in our current understanding of what sanity is. According to the World Health Organization, one in eight people in the world suffer from a mental disorder, with anxiety and depression being the most common conditions, to the point that experts speak of an epidemic of mental health problems that, according to studies, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic
For the average man like me, who has no academic knowledge of the human mind, all that remains are questions. Because this is a key and extremely important issue in unraveling the mysteries of the human condition. How can we integrate our primal instincts with our need to live in civilized societies? To what extent can this compromise negatively affect mental health? What is happening in our current society that there is such a high incidence of anxiety and depression?… I am left with only questions.
Or perhaps it has always been this way and it is the existence of a science dedicated exclusively to the study and healing of these problems that has created the situation. It could be that observation affects the outcome. This would be a conclusion of the Rosenhan experiment. But depression and anxiety exist. I have no doubt about it.
The pain and suffering that the First Noble Truth of Buddhism speaks of refers more to the psychological pain that human beings experience throughout their lives than perhaps mere physical pain. Buddhists were the first to understand the importance of psychological health.
Another conclusion is that madness is the natural state of human beings. Jung already said, “Show me someone who is sane and I will be sure to provide a cure for him.”
You don't have to be a psychologist to know that it is impossible to survive life without losing your sanity. Even if only a little.
Those who are sane, let them cast the first stone.
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