Explained: Is the mental health system flawed?

The Great Pretender has Cahalan, an investigative journalist, tracking down the volunteers, about whom nothing was known so far other than their pseudonyms.

Cahalan’s interest in the theme of madness is drawn from her own experience with several mis-diagnosis of auto-immune disorder and her journey through the recovery phase

In a controversial experiment in 1973, Stanford University psychologist David Rosenhan recruited seven healthy volunteers and made them feign symptoms of mental illness to get admitted to hospitals. This undercover mission was to test the legitimacy of some psychiatric labels. The results left a lasting influence on the field, with some psychiatric hospitals shutting down and psychiatry trying to reinvent itself thereafter. The experiment is the subject of the second book from award-winning author Susannah Cahalan, who ends up questioning the legitimacy of the pathbreaking study itself.