Am J Psychiatry 1985; 142:58-62
Copyright © 1985 by American Psychiatric Association
Patients' rights: a cultural challenge to Western psychiatry
EB Brody
To some degree, all psychiatric encounters, by constraining behavioral
variation and autonomous decision making, threaten a personhood already
impaired by illness. The challenge presented by this and other factors in
Western psychiatry is how to resolve the ethical dilemmas of justice,
autonomy, and beneficence inherent in contemporary hospitalization and
treatment practices for severely mentally ill persons. The author discusses
this challenge in terms of the physician- patient contract, clinical
standards for limiting autonomy, and the Kantian concept of equality of
mutual respect. The legal code in relation to psychiatry has evolved into a
contemporary interpreting mechanism for Kantian cultural tradition.
