#institutionalisation

The Department for Health and Social care said its "proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act [would] ensure people get the support they need in the community".

Miss Bowerman said the changes do not go far enough and more support should be available in the community so people can live in "good homes".

She said: "The reason I'm involved... is partly to get justice for my younger self, who shouldn't have been put through what I was put through.

The one day we all somehow agreed to host our first session our DM has technical difficulties and can't host.

"Psychiatrists in Denmark are still threatening to forcibly detain a severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) patient in a psychiatric hospital. They have dismissed the calls and vital severe ME information that more than 4,000 people in the ME and long Covid community presented to them as from “uncredible sources”. Now, 26-year-old Line Langager Anderson says that her psychiatrists are even using it against her...

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Would you be able to make a symbol for “I don’t need to be in the hospital” because I sometimes get sent against what I want and want to be able to say I don’t want that or need to be there.

"I don't need to be in the hospital."

The Rosenhan experiment is a notorious piece of research that was published in the journal Science in 1975. The experiment itself was designed to test the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, and was simple but effective in its design. The first part of the experiment involved 8 mentally healthy individuals (including the chief investigator, Rosenhan himself) attempting to gain admission to psychiatric institutions. They were instructed to do this simply by making an appointment with for an assessment, and reporting one psychotic symptoms - auditory hallucinations. They were instructed to inform the assessor that the hallucinations took the form of a voice that simply said one of three words, ‘empty’, ‘thud’ or ‘hollow’. No other symptoms were to be reported, and once admitted the ‘pseudopatients’ were to cease reporting these symptoms and behave normally. None of the staff in the institutions were aware of the experiment.

Every participant was admitted, and the experiment required that they get out of the hospital on their own. Once admitted they discovered that in order to be discharged they were expected to admit that they were mentally ill and agree to take antipsychotic medication. Seven of the participants were diagnosed with schizophrenia, one participant was diagnosed with manic-depressive psychosis. The average admission length was 19 days, with a range of 9-52.

After the first part of the experiment was completed, a well known teaching hospital that was not involved in the initial experiment felt that they would be able to identify any pseudopatients if they were to receive them. Rosenhan arranged a 3 month period of time where pseudopatients would be sent for assessment and the staff would rate patients on their likelihood of being an impostor. Staff identified 41 patients out 193 as impostors.

Rosenhan had not sent any pseudopatients. All 41 ‘impostors’ had been genuine psychiatric patients.

A Manifesto on Emotional Labour

I’ve thought about quitting my PhD a thousand times over. Trying to relay to people the mental burden it puts you under, the restful nights it steals from you, the weight of expectation that dogs your every move – none of it is an easy feat and speaking out about these pressures is something I still find difficult to do. Much of my hesitation lies in the fact that a lot of the work we do is in…