1. Madness versus badness: the ethical tension between the recovery movement and forensic psychiatry.
- Author
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Pouncey CL and Lukens JM
- Subjects
- Beneficence, Commitment of Mentally Ill legislation & jurisprudence, Commitment of Mentally Ill standards, Commitment of Mentally Ill trends, Community Mental Health Services, Decision Making, Humans, Interdisciplinary Communication, Jurisprudence, Knowledge, Mental Competency, Patient Advocacy, Physician-Patient Relations ethics, Public Policy legislation & jurisprudence, Public Policy trends, Punishment, Recovery of Function, Self-Help Groups, Social Values, Terminology as Topic, United States, Bioethics, Character, Community Psychiatry standards, Community Psychiatry trends, Criminals psychology, Dangerous Behavior, Forensic Psychiatry standards, Forensic Psychiatry trends, Mental Disorders psychology, Mental Disorders rehabilitation, Morals, Personal Autonomy
- Abstract
The mental health recovery movement promotes patient self-determination and opposes coercive psychiatric treatment. While it has made great strides towards these ends, its rhetoric impairs its political efficacy. We illustrate how psychiatry can share recovery values and yet appear to violate them. In certain criminal proceedings, for example, forensic psychiatrists routinely argue that persons with mental illness who have committed crimes are not full moral agents. Such arguments align with the recovery movement's aim of providing appropriate treatment and services for people with severe mental illness, but contradict its fundamental principle of self-determination. We suggest that this contradiction should be addressed with some urgency, and we recommend a multidisciplinary collaborative effort involving ethics, law, psychiatry, and social policy to address this and other ethical questions that arise as the United States strives to implement recovery-oriented programs.
- Published
- 2010
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