One patient’s experience of life-encompassing iatrogenic harm from being institutionalized emphasizes Italy’s comparative success, relative to the United States, in recovering from decades of deinstitutionalization policy.
AMA J Ethics. 2022;24(8):E795-803. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2022.795.
Kelsey Mumford, Lin Fraser, EdD, and Gail Knudson, MD, MEd
While transgender health care has moved beyond “gender identity disorder” and “gender dysphoria” as mental illnesses, gender incongruence continues to be a source of oppression.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(6):E446-451. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.446.
The gross negligence of the physicians who cared for Steve Biko, an apartheid-era South African political activist who died of injuries inflicted while in police custody, illustrates how dual loyalty—toward patients and, in this case, the state—makes performance of professional duties difficult.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):966-972. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.mhst1-1510.
Movements to deinstitutionalize people with mental illness and to make institutionalization more legally difficult have resulted in a lack of space and resources for the care of those with severe mental illness, and many have ended up in jails and prisons.
In the past, forced sterilizations violated the autonomy of vulnerable women. Today, measures intended to protect such women from the abuses of the past may in fact hamper their autonomy in a different way.