Examples do not spring readily to mind but there have been a number of journalists who have gotten themselves admitted to psychiatric hospitals in order to report on conditions only to find it very difficult to prove their sanity and get themselves sprung.
The Rosenhan experiment. (David Rosenhan.)
Also this other one is relevant:
Twenty-five psychiatrists were split into two groups. They
all listened to a tape of an actor acting in the picture of
mental health, but one group is given the preamble that the
person on the tape, "was a very interesting man because he
looked neurotic, but actually was quite psychotic." The
control group wasn't told anything. The two groups of
psychiatrists were asked for a most likely diagnosis based
on the tape. --
No one in the control group diagnosed psychosis, but in the
experimental groups given the preamble, diagnoses of
psychoses - most commonly schizophrenia - were made by 60
per cent of the psychiatrists. --
_Heart Failure_
