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Comment by Jakobeha | Hacker News Reader

My experience with surgery was actually pretty good. The sedation worked well, and although surgery messed me up for a bit, what brought me into the office was much worse.

Mental asylums, suicide treatment, etc. - those are the doctors / nurses that should experience being patients. Fortunately I've never been committed, but I've heard horror stories even in modern times. Not to say I believe those places aren't necessary - they definitely are, and have helped / saved people lives to the point where they're thankful for being involuntarily committed - but those in power should have empathy for the people being treated.

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Honestly I think mental health places should regularly experience "fake" patients. It's good for the students, but more importantly, I suspect that the Rosenhan experiment would go about the same today as it went in 1973.

If you haven't read about it, it was kind of amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

Basically a psychologist and his team got themselves admitted to 12 different hospitals by claiming auditory hallucinations. From that point on, they acted completely normal and claimed they no longer experienced any symptoms. The hospitals diagnosed nearly all of them with schizophrenia.

In the aftermath, one hospital demanded to be re-evaluated. The psychologist agreed. Over the next few weeks, the hospital found dozens of fake patients, despite the psychologist sending none at all.

Except that it's quite unclear if the experiment ever happened. Only one of the "pseudopatients" could be tracked down afterwards, and his recollection of the experiment differs markedly from Rosenhan's.

All the more reason to repeat the experiment regularly in an organised way.

Glad it worked for you. Some of us had less successful outcomes and years of pain, discomfort, disfiguration and the resulting depression and suicidal ideation. In my experience with surgery(one urology related, one shoulder surgery), surgeons over promise, under deliver, and are not at all compassionate when their magic fails to fix you.

I'm aware I've had good luck with regard to physical health.

Not getting into details, the main surgery I had was a routine operation which cured an otherwise life-threatening issue. So I'm a bit biased here.

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