Did you know that David Rosenhan and his fellow pseudopatients were not the first to fake their way into a mental health hospital? In 1887, one of the world’s first investigative journalists, Nellie Bly (real name Elizabeth Jane Cochran), went undercover to expose the brutality and neglect inside New York’s Bellevue Hospital, an asylum for women diagnosed as ‘insane’.
Bly feigned madness by depriving herself of sleep so that she behaved in a paranoid manner. Once she entered the hospital, she behaved exactly as she did in her everyday life. She wrote: ‘... strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted, the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget’ (Bly 1887/2015). After 10 days, the newspaper editor for whom Bly was working, contacted the asylum and asked for her to be released, explaining the circumstances.
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