The inherent problem with the Rosenham Experiment is that it involved sane people actively attempting to deceive doctors. That has no bearing on a sane person being incorrectly diagnosed assuming they do not attempt to appear to be insane.
In fact, that entire experiment is more or less discounted as fraud these days:
Mental health professionals, in fact, take the ‘mental’ part out, health professionals in general assume that people presenting a medical condition are honest brokers*, they can’t be faulted for failing to detect unreliable narrators.
* With the notable exception of women and minorities. Doctors seem all too willing to discount self reporting by women and minorities, that’s an entirely separate issue.
But to get back to your larger point of how do you define mental illness severe enough to when society needs to step in and take over:
It should be super simple. When your mental illness reaches a point where it’s having a systemic impact on others.
The lady sleeping on the freeway is actively posing a danger to other people. If some motorist hits her, she’s not the only person who is going to be critically injured. She needs to be removed and treated.
Or, take animal hoarders for example, they are actively posing a danger to the innocent animals they have collected.
It’s the whole “your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” Someone quietly going insane, not bothering anyone and refusing treatment is far different than, say, someone wandering into traffic waving a sword around.
When your problem becomes someone elses problem, it becomes all of ours problem. That’s when someone steps in. I’d much rather have it be a psych ward than the cops.
The inherent problem with the Rosenham Experiment is that it involved sane people actively attempting to deceive doctors. That has no bearing on a sane person being incorrectly diagnosed assuming they do not attempt to appear to be insane.
In fact, that entire experiment is more or less discounted as fraud these days:
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/distillations-pod/the-fraud-that-transformed-psychiatry/
Mental health professionals, in fact, take the ‘mental’ part out, health professionals in general assume that people presenting a medical condition are honest brokers*, they can’t be faulted for failing to detect unreliable narrators.
* With the notable exception of women and minorities. Doctors seem all too willing to discount self reporting by women and minorities, that’s an entirely separate issue.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/the-dangerous-dismissal-of-womens-pain
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/2021/06/physicians-more-likely-to-doubt-black-patients
But to get back to your larger point of how do you define mental illness severe enough to when society needs to step in and take over:
It should be super simple. When your mental illness reaches a point where it’s having a systemic impact on others.
The lady sleeping on the freeway is actively posing a danger to other people. If some motorist hits her, she’s not the only person who is going to be critically injured. She needs to be removed and treated.
Or, take animal hoarders for example, they are actively posing a danger to the innocent animals they have collected.
It’s the whole “your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” Someone quietly going insane, not bothering anyone and refusing treatment is far different than, say, someone wandering into traffic waving a sword around.
Man, I WISH I was kidding about that last one.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2015/05/sword-wielding_bipolar_man_in.html
When your problem becomes someone elses problem, it becomes all of ours problem. That’s when someone steps in. I’d much rather have it be a psych ward than the cops.