Commentary
Ethical Issues in Forensic Psychiatry: Minimzing Harm by Robert L. Sadoff, MD
The concept of primum non nocere—first, do no harm—is the basis for ethical medical practice and treatment in psychiatry. However, it cannot, and does not, apply to forensic cases where there is no doctor-patient relationship and the forensic psychiatrist may indeed cause harm to the examinee. Consider, for example, the psychiatrist hired by the prosecution in a capital murder case. His or her assessment of the defendant may lead to a verdict of guilty and subsequent death penalty. more...
Healing Psychiatry: Bridging the Science/Humanism Divide by David Brendel, MD, PhD
The healing of psychiatry demands a thorough appreciation of the field's explanatory models. Most current explanatory models in psychiatry are either primarily scientific or primarily humanistic. The former are attractive inasmuch as they aim to justify clinical explanations and treatments by way of empirical evidence and scientific rigor, but they are flawed inasmuch as they tend to restrict options for diagnostic and therapeutic paradigm choice. The latter have the advantage of acknowledging the complex, subjective, and multifaceted features of most mental disorders, but they are imperfect because they often lack a coherent and well-defined basis in empirically derived scientific evidence. more...
Drug Therapy for Alcohol Dependency: What’s the Issue? by Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
Naltrexone, which is sold under the trade names Depade and Revia and in an extended release version called Vivitrol, has been shown in many studies by many groups in the United States and other nations to be a very safe drug that is highly effective in treating alcoholism. Yet, relatively few programs that treat chronic alcoholics use the drug. Why? more...
Borderline Personality Disorder & Ethical Practice in Psychiatry by Nancy Potter, Ph.D.
I began taking an interest in the diagnosis and treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD) when I worked as a crisis counselor and would be warned by other workers to avoid so-and-so because “she’s a borderline.” The pejorative tone was hard to miss. Since then, I have taken it upon myself to investigate BPD both in terms of its conceptual features and its bearing on psychiatric ethics. more...