History Main / DrPsychPatient

* ''Film/{{Spellbound}}'' is one of the most famous examples, with Creator/GregoryPeck as Dr. Edwards, who initially presents as a psychiatrist and is later revealed to be a patient with delusions and severe amnesia.

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* A similar example involving a psychiatric patient that thinks he is a lawyer, talking to his family in pretty good legalese until he's subdued, appears on the second ''Film/{{Airplane}}'' movie.
* In ''The Couch Trip'', Dan Aykroyd plays a mental patient who escapes & impersonates his psychiatrist at a conference while the psychiatrist is out of the country.

* The Creator/RichardPryor film ''Critical Condition'' plays with this: Pryor's character is a hustler that successfully pulled off the InsanityDefense and thus is admitted in the psychiatric wing of a hospital, from which he later manages to escape by pretending to be a doctor... and the plot forces him to keep up the charade when the area that the hospital is in becomes ground zero for the landfall of a hurricane, [[ClosedCircle making transportation impossible]] and putting the patients (some of which became his friends) at risk.

* ''The Dream Team'' opens with a man (Creator/ChristopherLloyd) in a lab coat walking down the halls of a mental institution taking notes on a clipboard. It turns out that he's a patient, while in reality the psychiatrist treating him is dressed much more casually. Later in the film, he poses as a psychiatrist successfully so he can get some bad guys temporarily committed on a psych hold.
* The Creator/AlfredHitchcock film ''Spellbound'' is one of the most famous examples, with Creator/GregoryPeck as Dr. Edwards, who initially presents as a psychiatrist and is later revealed to be a patient with delusions and severe amnesia.

* In ''Nuts'' (1987), Claudia Draper uses one to play a joke on her public defender, who doesn't realize it until the 'doctor' starts mumbling vaguely, gets up from the table and wanders off, revealing she's wearing InstitutionalApparel under her coat.
* ''Film/Asylum1972Horror'': The anthology both inverts this trope ''and'' plays it straight: the applicant to replace the titular hospital's chief doctor is challenged by the acting head to determine which of four interviewed patients is the ''previous'' head of the facility, who has suffered a breakdown and no longer remembers being a staff member. The concluding twist has the attendant who'd let the would-be new head into the interview rooms turn out to be the previous office-holder he's looking for, having killed and assumed the identity of the real attendant.

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* The 1972 horror anthology ''Film/{{Asylum}}'' both inverts this trope ''and'' plays it straight: the applicant to replace the titular hospital's chief doctor is challenged by the acting head to determine which of four interviewed patients is the ''previous'' head of the facility, who has suffered a breakdown and no longer remembers being a staff member. The concluding twist has the attendant who'd let the would-be new head into the interview rooms turn out to be the previous office-holder he's looking for, having killed and assumed the identity of the real attendant.

* Dr. Hotti from ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' is the self-proclaimed director of the Hotti clinic who is revealed to be an unnamed patient with a stolen lab coat and a stethoscope. He even manages to fool Edgeworth at one point. The main reason for faking his status is because… he's a DirtyOldMan.

* In ''Film/{{Teachers}}'', a delusional patient wanders into the school and is mistaken for the new American history instructor. He embraces the role and winds up teaching for most of the year, winning students' approval with his over-the-top costumed portrayals of historical figures.

* RealLife inversion: In 1973, Stanford University psychologist Dr. David Rosenhan and seven of his collaborators [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment had themselves admitted to mental hospitals]] claiming to be hearing voices. All of the "patients" were admitted, none of them were discovered to be malingering, and they were detained for periods of seven to fifty-two days. Although the hospital staff never guessed the hoax, a number of other patients reportedly realised that the investigators were sane.

* In ''WesternAnimation/Disenchantment'', Chazz seems to be one of these, freely admitting he's a lunatic who escaped from the asylum, yet frequently returns there to act as an orderly. He even tries to be the doctor for King Zog's sessions, though one of his superiors (or co-lunatics) quickly tells him off, saying "It's more shock therapy for you!"

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* In the ''WesternAnimation/IAmWeasel'' episode "He Said, He Said", the Red Guy plays a psychiatrist to Weasel and baboon. A look at his license reveals that he crossed out "OTIC" in "PSYCHOTIC" and write in "IATRIST".

Dr. Hotti from ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' is the self-proclaimed director of the Hotti clinic who is revealed to be an unnamed patient with a stolen lab coat and a stethoscope. He even manages to fool Edgeworth at one point. The main reason for faking his status is because... he's a DirtyOldMan.

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* Dr. Hotti from ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' is the self-proclaimed director of the Hotti clinic who is revealed to be an unnamed patient with a stolen lab coat and a stethoscope. He even manages to fool Edgeworth at one point. The main reason for faking his status is because... he's a DirtyOldMan.
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* In ''Film/TheATeam'', the EstablishingCharacterMoment of [[AcePilot Captain]] "[[CloudCuckoolander Howling Mad]]" Murdoch has [[TheBigGuy Baracus]] and [[LovableRogue Face]] mistake him for a doctor. He's already sown a wound on Baracus' arm in the shape of a lightning bolt by the time the real doctor (and [[TheLeader Hannibal]]) comes along.

* ''Spellbound'' is one of the most famous examples, with Creator/GregoryPeck as Dr. Edwards, who initially presents as a psychiatrist and is later revealed to be a patient with delusions and severe amnesia.

* ''Film/Spellbound'' is one of the most famous examples, with Creator/GregoryPeck as Dr. Edwards, who initially presents as a psychiatrist and is later revealed to be a patient with delusions and severe amnesia.

Compare NapoleonDelusion, in which the patient is convinced they're someone else, but the fact that they're deluded isn't initially hidden from other characters or the audience. Contrast LostInCharacter, in which an otherwise-sane actor becomes caught up in living their assumed role.

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* In the ''WesternAnimation/IAmWeasel'' episode "He Said, He Said", the Red Guy plays a psychiatrist to Weasel and baboon. A look at his licence reveals that he crossed out "OTIC" in "PSYCHOTIC" and write in "IATRIST".

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->''I don't want you to think of me as a psychiatrist, I want you to think of me as a mental patient who killed a psychiatrist before you got here''