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Book ID: CBB484312893

The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness (2019)

Cahalan, Susannah (Author)

Grand Central Publishing
Publication date: 2019
Language: English

ISBN: 9781538715284

Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 400

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Diagnosis Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment Mental disorders and diseases Psychiatric hospitals Psychiatry 20th century, late United States Rosenhan, David

Shortlisted for the 2020 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book PrizeNamed a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian * The Telegraph * The Times"One of America's most courageous young journalists" and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire investigates the shocking mystery behind the dramatic experiment that revolutionized modern medicine (NPR).Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity--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, healthy, 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 in this real-life detective story, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors?

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Review Roderick David Buchanan (2020) Review of "The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 52-53). unapi

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