Rosenhan Reconsidered: The Landmark Psychiatry Study That Shaped—and Questioned—Mental Health Reform

A retrospective on David Rosenhan's 1973 landmark study in Science, which claimed eight sane individuals were misdiagnosed in psychiatric wards and catalyzed major reforms and the DSM-III; decades later Susannah Cahalan's investigation challenged the paper's data, alleging fictitious or exaggerated elements and prompting renewed scrutiny of psychiatric diagnosis while acknowledging that reforms and the overall critique of psychiatry persisted.