The Fraud That Transformed Psychiatry Series, Transcript P9
- Shidonna Raven
- Mar 4
- 3 min read
July 23, 2024
Source: The Scince History Institute
Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,
Host: Alexis Pedrick
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Associate Producer: Sarah Kaplan
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
“Color Theme” composed by Jonathan Pfeffer. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Psychology professor David Rosenhan made waves with his “On Being Sane in Insane Places” study, but decades later its legitimacy was questioned.
WFGD Studio
Transcript
Alexis Pedrick: After that first day, he was able to spit out the Thorazine and flush it down the toilet.
Bill Underwood: And one time, I remember I went in there, it’s been about three minutes since I had taken the pills, went into the toilet to get rid of my, uh, Thorazine, and there were already some pills in the bottom of the toilet when I got there. So I was clearly not the only one who was following that procedure.
Alexis Pedrick: This was valuable information about how drugs were used in hospitals, and David Rosenhan would go on to talk about this experience of Bill’s.
Archived Audio of Dr. Rosenhan in Conversation: We were not alone in spitting out our medication. We’d get to the bathroom and find the bottom of the toilet bowl lying with pink and yellow little things from all the patients we’ve gotten there before us. We got very little treatment except drugs, medications, and in that sense, drugs, however good they may be, have done a real disservice to patients and to staff because there you are in the hospital and the nurse and the physician are feeding you medications and they feel that the medications are getting you better. And consequently, there’s nothing else that needs to be done.
Alexis Pedrick: Like David, Bill felt ignored by the staff, invisible.
Bill Underwood: We didn’t get a lot of attention from the ward attendants. I remember one day early in my time there, I went up to one of the ward attendants to point out that there was something going on with a couple of guys over at the side of the yard. And he just turned his back and walked away from me. I thought, geez, this is not the kind of interaction I am used to having with people. Not the sort of reaction I would expect.
Alexis Pedrick: It was an unpleasant feeling, but the lack of attention was also potentially dangerous.
Bill Underwood: Early one morning before breakfast, one of the nurses woke me up. And said, uh, Mr. Dixon, uh, wake up, you have diabetes. You need to go to this medical facility in the hospital here. And so I thought, good lord, you know, I had no idea I was diabetic.
Alexis Pedrick: But it turned out that the nurse had confused him with another patient with the same name.
Bill Underwood: And it turns out it was the other Dixon. I was 20 years younger than him. I had red hair and a beard. He was clean shaven and had black hair. But, you know, other than that, we looked just alike. But anyway, it made me feel like they were not paying very close attention. So, there were people who were paying attention to what I was doing, but it was not the staff people. And so, to me, that, that is a statement about the extent to which the staff were really attending to what I was doing. Or maybe they were just saying, okay, he’s not causing trouble. I need to focus on these other people. Whatever the reason, there were a lot of people who were paying more attention to me than the staff. And those people were my fellow patients.
How can such practices impact your health? How Why?
Share the wealth of health with your friends and family by sharing this article with 3 people today.
If this article was helpful to you, donate to the Shidonna Raven Garden and Cook E-Magazine Today. Thank you in advance.
Comments