The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment claimed to have been conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Participants supposedly submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each was diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and were given antipsychotic medication. The study was claimed to have been conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan, a Stanford University professor, and published by the journal Science in 1973 under the title "On Being Sane in Insane Places".
The main building of St. Elizabeths Hospital (1996), located in Washington, D.C., now part of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was one of the sites of the Rosenhan experiment
Deinstitutionalisation is the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health services for those diagnosed with a mental disorder or developmental disability. In the late 20th century, it led to the closure of many psychiatric hospitals, as patients were increasingly cared for at home, in halfway houses and clinics, in regular hospitals, or not at all.
The former St Elizabeth's Hospital in 2006, closed and boarded up. Located in Washington D.C., the hospital had been one of the sites of the Rosenhan experiment in the 1970s.
Vienna's Narrenturm—German for "fools' tower"—was one of the earliest buildings specifically designed for mentally ill people. It was built in 1784.
St. Loman's Hospital, Mullingar, Ireland, an infamous psychiatric hospital.
The water tower of Park Prewett Hospital in Basingstoke, Hampshire. The hospital was redeveloped into a housing estate after its closure in 1997.
