Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry

Guy Widdershoven is Professor of Ethics of Health Care and Scientific Director of the School for Public Health and Primary Care (CAPHRI) at Maastricht University. His research subject is hermeneutic ethics, especially in the area of chronic care (elderly care, psychiatry and care for people with an intellectual disability). He is one of the editors, with Richard Ashcroft, Anneke Lucassen, Michael Parker and Marian Verkerk of Case Analysis in Clinical Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Tony Hope is Professor of Medical Ethics at the Ethox Centre of the University of Oxford, and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist. He has carried out research in basic neuroscience and Alzheimer's Disease. Since 1990 he has focused on clinical ethics. His books include: the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (editions 1-4); Manage Your Mind; Medical Ethics and Law: the Core Curriculum; and Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. John McMillan is Senior Lecturer in Medical Ethics at the Hull-York Medical School and the Philosophy Department, University of Hull. He is a deputy director of the Institute of Applied Ethics, University of Hull. His publications include articles and book chapters on the philosophy of psychiatry and Bioethics. He is co-editor of The Principles of Healthcare Ethics (with Richard Ashcroft, Angus Dawson and Heather Draper; 2007). He is co-author of Consciousness and Intentionality (with Grant Gillett; 2001). Lieke van der Scheer studied philosophy and wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on Unregulated Morality: Dewey's Concept of Experience as a Basis for Health Ethics (in Dutch). Her publications concern the methodology and the theory of empirical ethical research as well as the ethical aspect of care practice. Besides teaching ethics at the Faculty Health, Medicine and Life Sciences of Maastricht University, she also teaches and trains professionals in the care sector. She is a member of various institutional review boards in charge of ethically testing medical research with human subjects.

1. Introduction ; 2. The possibility of empirical psychiatric ethics ; 3. Theory and methodology of empirical ethics: a pragmatic hermeneutic perspective ; 4. The origin and emergence of empirical ethics ; 5. Which empirical research, whose ethics? Articulating ideals in long term mental health care ; 6. Models of mental disorder: how philosophy and the social sciences can illuminate psychiatric ethics ; 7. Empirical ethics in action in practices of dementia care ; 8. Family carers, ethics and dementia: an empirical study ; 9. The advance directive conjuring trick and the person with dementia ; 10. Coercion in psychiatric care: a sociological and ethical case history analysis ; 11. Providing good care in the context of restrictive measures: the case of prevention of obesity in youngsters with Prader-Willi syndrome ; 12. Ulysses arrangements in psychiatry: from normative ethics to empirical research, and back ; 13. Treatment refusal in anorexia nervosa: a challenge to current concepts of capacity ; 14. Studying moral reasoning in forensic psychiatric patients ; 15. Patient incompetence in the practice of old age psychiatry: the significance of empirical research for the law