[blast]

> She was given some anti-psychotics and sent away

But that confirms the main point of the experiment, which was that people who didn't need psychiatric treatment were given it anyway.

It's only of secondary importance that the prescribed treatment changed from hospitalization in 1973 to drugs by 2004. The primary point is that there was no objective way to determine who genuinely needed treatment. She didn't, but was diagnosed anyway.

This objection is so obvious that she must have addressed it in the book. Do you remember if she did?

[hamdingers]

I happen to have the book handy.

> HERE’S WHAT’S DIFFERENT: I was not admitted. This is a very significant difference. No one even thought about admitting me. I was mislabeled but not locked up. Here’s another thing that’s different: every single medical professional was nice to me. Rosenhan and his confederates felt diminished by their diagnoses; I, for whatever reason, was treated with palpable kindness.

Seems she would disagree with your assessment that being prescribed some likely-harmless pills is the same as losing your freedom.

There's also a section earlier where she presents an argument the actual finding of the study is that mental healthcare is not set up to handle adversarial or dishonest patients, which is still a problem and a tough one to solve.

[blast]

Sorry for replying so late, I only just checked the thread.

"I was mislabeled but not locked up" is misleading because hospitalization was phased out decades ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation). The reason she didn't get "locked up" is because treatments changed, not because she was assessed correctly (she was not). Psychotic patients don't get "locked up" by default anymore—they get medicated, which is what happened in her case as well.

It's a red herring to emphasize an obsolete practice that was phased out long ago. "I was mislabeled but not locked up" says no more than "I was mislabeled but not put in an insulin coma". A more accurate statement would be "I was misdiagnosed and treated for mental illness". Written that way, it's clearer that this is not a refutation of Rosenhan at all, and looks more like a replication.

I don't know if the book is actually this misleading because I haven't read it. I'm just making an out-of-context response to the out-of-context bits of information I've gleaned here.

[rcxdude]

Mental healthcare does care about dishonest patients in some cases, mainly where it's an avenue for drug-seeking. But no-one's trying to get ahold of anti-psychotics for recreational purposes.