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.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.
The revisions balance a growing understanding of gender identity disorders and societal views with the need to retain conditions that benefit from intervention and the removal of which would hamper patients’ ability to receive medical treatment.
Physicians have an ethical responsibility to caregivers whose psychological distress is caused by their experience of the patient’s illness and treatment.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(5):493-500. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.5.msoc3-1705.
A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.