The Divided Mind by Edward Bullmore review do we now know what causes schizophrenia?

"In 1973, an American psychologist called David Rosenhan published the results of a bold experiment. He'd arranged for eight pseudo-patients to attend appointments at psychiatric institutions, where they complained to doctors about hearing voices that said empty, hollow and thud. All were admitted, diagnosed with either schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. They immediately stopped displaying any symptoms and started saying they felt fine. The first got out after seven days; the last after 52."

"Told of these findings, psychiatrists at a major teaching hospital found it hard to believe that they'd make the same mistake, so Rosenhan devised another experiment: over the next three months, he informed them, one or more pseudopatients would go undercover and, at the end, staff would be asked to decide who had been faking it. Of 193 patients admitted, 20% were deemed suspicious."

"Rosenhan's gambit seized the public imagination. Were the men in white suits just quacks? Was mental illness even real? Two years later, the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest added to the sense of reputational meltdown, and the psychiatric establishment responded with a major tightening up of diagnostic criteria, squeezing disparate symptoms into even tighter boxes. A freewheeling challenge to psychiatry ended up provoking a kind of counter-reformation, making the profession more medicalised than it had been for decades."

A 1973 experiment sent eight pseudo-patients who reported hearing the words empty, hollow and thud to psychiatric hospitals; all were admitted and diagnosed with schizophrenia or manic-depressive psychosis. The pseudopatients ceased presenting symptoms after admission and were released between seven and 52 days. A claimed follow-up warned staff that one or more pseudopatients would be sent, and 20% of admitted patients were labeled suspicious, though none had been sent. The experiment provoked public concern and a tightening of diagnostic criteria that increased medicalization. Subsequent investigative reporting concluded much of the original study was fabricated, calling its conclusions into question.

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