Professor of psychology and law at Stanford University David Rosenhan conducted an interesting experiment.
He selected eight completely normal people in all parameters. All of them turned to psychiatric clinics as people who are concerned about their mental health. Everyone was telling the truth about themselves and their condition, except for one detail - they allegedly heard voices saying "empty," "deaf," "touch." The doctors considered them mentally ill. They were all sent to clinics. Immediately after hospitalization, the doctors told them they felt great and no more voices were heard. Everyone was on treatment for 52 days and behaved like normal people. According to the results of treatment, seven were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and one was diagnosed with manic-depressive psychosis. After being discharged from the clinic, their condition was described by doctors as “improved,” “in remission,” but no doctor thought they had recovered.
After the results of the experiment were published, all psychiatric clinics questioned them, saying that such gross mistakes were impossible. Professor Rosenhan proposed to repeat the experiment, saying that he would send to them some more imaginary patients.
The clinics carefully diagnosed the following 193 patients and 41 of them were diagnosed with “pseudopathy.” In fact, the professor did not send a single person to the clinic.