The Martha Mitchell Effect

In 2003, a team of psychologists set out to examine how mental health clinicians can mistakenly assume accurate accounts of real events from their patients, such as pursuit by organised criminals or surveillance by law enforcement, to be evidence of grandiose delusions. In their paper, Beliefs About Delusions, it was this phenomenon that the authors call The Martha Mitchell Effect.

Who was Martha Mitchell?

Martha Beall Mitchell (1918-75) was married to John Mitchell, US Attorney General in the Nixon administration. According to Martha, White House officials were taking part in illicit activities, namely, using her husband as a scapegoat to protect Nixon.

She was held at gunpoint, physically attacked, and sedated by a guard named Stephen King, who was supposedly working on orders from her husband.

(N.B. Stephen King was appointed by Trump as ambassador to the Czech Republic in 2017.)

After sharing her story, she was dubbed ‘the Mouth of the South’ in press reports and her claims were widely attributed to alcoholism and hysterical symptoms.

When the facts of the 1972 Watergate scandal were ultimately revealed, leading to Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Martha was vindicated and she garnered the label ‘The Cassandra of Watergate’.

Watch this interview below to hear in Martha’s words the corruption surrounding the Watergate Scandal:

Why learn about this now?

This still happens today. Unfortunately, there are countless other examples of this form of gaslighting occurring throughout history and in recent events.

Within the last ten years in Germany, evidence of money-laundering at a big bank became a massive scandal, though was initially dismissed as delusional when the accuser was diagnosed with mental illness.

Further, in the UK, NHS whistleblower Kay Sheldon reported failings in the Care Quality Commission in 2012, and was immediately directed towards psychiatric assessment.

Before we immediately label someone as ‘crazy’, or pass up an opportunity to call out corruption ourselves, we might be reminded of the will and strength of Martha Mitchell and other whistleblowers in coming forward in the face of belligerent authority figures.