The great pretender : the undercover mission that changed our understanding of madness Cover Image

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The great pretender : the undercover mission that changed our understanding of madness / Susannah Cahalan.

Summary:

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--sane, normal, well-adjusted 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?

Record details

ISBN: 9781538715284
ISBN: 1538715287
Physical Description: xiii, 382 pages ; 24 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2019.
Copyright: ©2019

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [307]-366) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Mirror image -- Nellie Bly -- The seat of madness -- On being sane in insane places -- A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma -- The essence of David -- "Go slowly, and perhaps not at all" -- "I might not be unmasked" -- Comitted -- Nine days inside a madhouse -- Getting in -- ...And only the insane knew who was sane -- W. Underwood -- Crazy eights -- Ward 11 -- Soul on ice -- Rosemary Kennedy -- The truth seeker -- "All other questions follow from that" -- Criterionating -- The SCID -- The footnote -- "It's all in your mind" -- Shadow mental health care system -- The hammer -- An epidemic -- Moons of Jupiter.