The Martha Mitchell Effect
Martha Beall was born on September 2, 1918 and later became Martha Beall Mitchell the wife of President Richard Nixon’s 1968 appointed Attorney General, John Mitchell.
Nixon, notoriously known as a man who shifted blame away from himself and onto others, shamelessly placed the Watergate scandal onto Martha’s shoulders. In an interview with popular talk show host David Frost (September 1977 on Frost on America) Nixon said, “If it hadn‘t been for Martha Mitchell, there‘d have been no Watergate.”
Martha’s claims of White House wrong doing were thought at first as unbelievable, but were eventually proven correct. On January 1, 1975, her husband John Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and served nineteen months in federal prison.
Martha Mitchell was right, despite being accused of suffering from delusions and diagnosed as such. The Nixon administration was up to their “dirty tricks” as she so correctly described it.
Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
The Martha Mitchell effect is the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient‘s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.
