Goffman, Grob and Rosenhan each highlight different aspects of the mental health field and the people that work in it and the individuals it serves. For me, each author added valuable insights to take with me in my role working with individuals living with mental health illness who’ve found themselves involved in the criminal justice system. Erving Goffman’s basis for his discussion and analysis in the book “alyslums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Health Patients and Other Inmates” is a period of time he spend in a mental hospital. A compilation of four essays, Goffman’s focuses is his interest on the relationship that develop in total institutions: inmates amongst themselves, inmates and staff, and staff among themselves. Goffman makes two major points. The first point is the development of the concept of the total institution. Goffman explains that in …show more content…
Rosenhan, in his essay, “on Being Sane in Insane Places,” discusses a serioes of experiments involving psychiatric institution and the effects of misdiagnoses of psychological disorders. Rosenhan’s research illustrates the impact that the labels associated with mental health have on the way patients are treated in hospitals. In the experiment, Rosenhan and several pseudo patients intentionally tried to get themselves admitted to mental hospitals in several states, primarily assuming symptoms associated with schizophrenia disorder. The pseudo patients were easily admitted and once inside stopped exhibiting behaviors associated with mental health illness. Rosenhan’s idea was that once the pseudo patient stopped exhibiting sings of psychosis it would be easy to detect the pseudo patient and they would be discharged. To Rosenhan’s surprise the behaviors that traditionally are considered normal were interpreted by hospital staff as being part of the pseudo patient’s pseudo condition. Rosenhan’s main experiment illustrated a failure to detect sanity and the secondary study failed to detect