This month on Ethics Talk, Dr Sheryl Fleisch discusses strategies for delivering health services to people experiencing homelessness, including street psychiatry.
The DSM-5 Task Force’s handling of the ethical controversy over the bereavement exclusion demonstrates the need for more inclusive deliberative processes.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(2):192-198. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.2.pfor2-1702.
Dr Morgan C. Shields joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Zohra Kantawala and Dr Ramesh Raghavan: “Why Patient-Centered Built Environment Standards Matter More Than Numbers of Beds in Inpatient Psychiatry”
Daphne C. Ferrer, MD and Peter M. Yellowlees, MBBS, MD
Telepsychiatry extends access to psychiatric treatment to those who might not otherwise get it, but licensure problems and the risk of boundary violations between patients and physicians need to be worked out.
Neuroscience's associations between localized brain activity and specific cognitive tasks is not sufficient evidence for rejecting the notion of free will and absolving individuals of responsibility for their behavior.
When deciding whether a pregnant woman will take antidepressants that pose a slight risk to the fetus, the patient and doctor must each make value-based determinations about whether absolute protection of the fetus is more important than preventing the mother’s probable suffering.