The field of ethics is expanding and has assumed new significance as a compulsory part of study for psychiatrists and all mental health professionals. Ethics and Mental Health: The Patient, Profession and Community presents a new approach to these ethical dilemmas that have become an increasing part of modern practice.
The book begins by exploring current normative theories of psychiatric ethics. It describes how empirical methods can make codes of conduct more representative of professional values. Considering their previous work, concepts of justice, and the moderate communitarian position, the authors outline their methodology, which argues that mental health professionals exist within a perpetual state of tension, caused by conflicts between the Hippocratic Oath, personal values, notions of social justice, and the potentially harmful influences of their social role.
Applying their theory to the area of involuntary psychiatric treatment, the authors address the context of psychiatric practice and the moral agency of psychiatrists. They outline the different influences on the craft of psychiatry to better illustrate the diverse forces that impact moral deliberation and the practice of ethics in mental health. In doing so, they cover areas as diverse as cultural, economic, scientific, and political domains.
The final section of the book applies the methodology to contemporary problems in mental health ethics, formulating how mental health clinicians can approach these quandaries. The book brings a new perspective to classic dilemmas from the past, to contemporary challenges, and in anticipation, to new concerns that will inevitably arise in a dynamic and complex professional context.
Clinical Associate Professor Michael Robertson is a community-based psychiatrist with special expertise in civil forensic psychiatry. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on ethics, psychological trauma, and philosophical aspects of psychiatry. His PhD examined ethics and PTSD and in 2009 he was appointed Clinical Associate Professor of psychiatric ethics at the University of Sydney, where he coordinates the mental health ethics unit of study in the Sydney Bioethics Program. His varied research interests include values-based practice, involuntary psychiatric treatment, and the practice of psychiatry in Nazi Germany.
Professor Garry Walter is Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Sydney and is also Clinical Director of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Northern Sydney Local Health District, and long-standing Editor of the journal
Australasian Psychiatry. Professor Walter has published over 300 articles and has won a number of key research awards. His major research interests are in mood disorders in young people, physical treatments in psychiatry, genocide and severe trauma, psychiatric stigma, use and abuse of media, publishing processes and ethics. His PhD was on the use of electroconvulsive therapy in the young. In 2012, Professor Walter was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to medicine.
