Anyone in psychiatry?

[cuddy duck]

I'm looking for a research project, as shocking in its way as the Stanford experiment, where a bunch of sane folk engineered their admission to psychiatric hospital on the strength of claiming a single symptom consistent with psychosis, then acted entirely normally on the wards but found their normal behaviour was interpreted/reported as pathological.
Can anyone point me to it?

[Peter]

Sorry, no and in any case you might question my motives.

[cuddy duck]

Ah! Peter displays evasive behaviours.

[Peter]

So my wives tell me!

[cuddy duck]

.. and bigamist delusions of sexual potency, suggest ECT.

[Hot Flatus]

Won't they let you out, Cuddy?

[Peter]

Cuddy, I think this may be what you're looking for:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

(The Stanford one was the famous prison experiment)

[Martin109]

The excellent Phil Mollon refers to this in his blazing article 'New Attacks on Psychotherapy' on his website.  It's well worth reading his whole article.

"In 1980, the DSM-III was produced – a vast increase in size from the earlier DSM-II. The task force was led by Robert Spitzer. He had been particularly concerned about the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis since the famous 1973 study by the sociologist Rosenhan called On being Sane in Insane Places. He had arranged for 8 non-psychotic confederates to get themselves admitted to a psychiatric hospital by claiming to experience a voice saying a single word (either ‘thud’, ‘hollow’, or ‘empty’). This was the only symptom presented. All were admitted to a hospital. After admission they stopped feigning their experiences. All but one was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia – the other was diagnosed as manic-depressive. When they became asymptomatic, they were considered to be in remission. Once admitted, they were not able to obtain release until they agreed with the diagnosis of the psychiatrists and took antipsychotic medication. Since the reaction of the psychiatric establishment was disbelief, Rosenhan followed this up by informing the staff of a teaching hospital, where it had been claimed that such misdiagnosis could not happen, that over the next three months one or more pseudo-patients would attempt to be admitted. No such attempt was made – but out of 193 patients, 41 were considered by staff to be pseudo-patients and a further 42 were suspected of being. Therefore Rosenhan concluded that psychiatric diagnosis is subjective rather than reflecting inherent disease characteristics. Spitzer, heading the DSM-III task group had been one of the main critics of the Rosenhan study. He sought to establish clear rules for diagnosis – thus focusing on reliability but ignoring the point that validity of psychiatric diagnosis was in question. "

[Beaten to it by Peter!]

[cuddy duck]

The very same Peter, and then Martin. Thanks.
Hot spoons for flatus?