Am J Psychiatry 1976; 133:125-136
Copyright © 1976 by American Psychiatric Association
Overview: Ethical issues in contemporary psychiatry
F Redlich and RF Mollica
The authors survey the ethical problems confronting psychiatry today. They
state that with rare exceptions psychiatric intervention can be morally
justified only with the potential patient's informed consent. Within this
framework, they discuss the fact that today nonpsychiatrists, particularly
ethicists, lawyers, legislators, and social scientists, as well as
psychiatrists are concerned about medical ethics, specifically regarding
the right to be treated, the right not to be treated, the civil rights of
psychiatric patients, the ethics of behavior control, the problem of
conflicts of interest in therapeutic goals, privacy and confidentiality,
the ethics of human experimentation, policy decisions, and psychiatry's
relationship to the changing moral value structure of U.S. society.
