marked essay on 8 marker about evaluating classic study from clinical psychology, which is Rosenhan (1973), including 2PEEL paragraphs and a nuanced and balanced conclusions for top band marks.
Evaluate classic study from clinical
psychology (8)
One weakness of Rosenhan 1973 is that it was unethical. 8 pseudo patients 3 women and
five men were admitted into 12 psychiatric hospitals across the United States of America
and they recorded notes about life on ward. The results were that they were all treated in a
way that was consistent with their diagnostic label. Seven out of 8 pseudopatients were
given a diagnosis of schizophrenia and one was given a diagnosis of manic depression with
psychosis after they reported hearing voices like hollow and empty. The staff frequently
pathologized the pseudo patients normal behaviour such as reporting waiting outside the
lunch as oral inquisitive syndrome and the recording notes was interpreted as writing
behaviour. The pseudo patient had no right to withdraw as they were told to stay in the
hospital until they convinced the staff of their sanity which might have led to ill and
vulnerable patients failing to seek support and being discriminated or neglected due to staff
believing they were fake. This may have caused psychological harm making the study
unethical as all those who took part in the study should leave this study in the same state as
they entered it. On the other hand the study had useful for applications for real life and they
told us that hospital staff should treat the mentally ill patients with more humanity and spend
more time with them since the outbursts of anger and frustration from the patients in this
study were provoked by the staff mistreating them and burdensome hospital procedures.
However the study lacked inter-rater reliability as there was only one pseudopatient
recording notes about life in hospitals in each psychiatric institution. This could have led to
researcher bias since the pseudo patients might have only recorded negative experiences
in the hospital which will support the aim of the anti-psychiatry movement, which was to raise
awareness about the psychologically mortifying experiences in psychiatric institutions. This
would lower the reliability of the study as their findings may not have represented what the
aim of this study should have. The study however had good generalizability as 12 psychiatric
institutions across five United States of America were investigated which represented a
variety of types of institutions for example from private ones to older ones to research
hospitals. This meant that the results were not limited to just one type of institution and were
representative of most psychiatric hospitals.
In conclusion the study might have had useful applications for the treatment of the mentally
ill in psychiatric institutions but the conclusions might have been affected by potential
researcher bias from the pseudo patients therefore to improve the procedures of the study
more than one pseudo patients could have taken notes about life one word in each
psychiatric hospital to check for consistency between results and reduce researcher bias in
the results, thus improving inter-rater reliability.
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