Rosenhan Aims and Context

There is a lot of conflicting data on the reliability, use and meaning of terms such as 'sanity' and 'insanity.' Therefore, one way to distinguish if a person is abnormal is to compare their behaviour to others.

The medical model does provide us with a way of defining mental illness through symptoms. If a person displays characteristics of a particular illness it is possible to categorise them as having a particular mental disorder. The DSM is a classification system for mental illness. The characteristics are listed, allowing for a diagnosis to be made. As the symptoms are based on behaviour and how we think, it makes interpreting them more subjective. Diagnosis using the DSM in…