Everyday ethics : voices from the front line of community psychiatry / Paul Brodwin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brodwin, Paul.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychiatric ethics.

Medical ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book explores the moral lives of mental health clinicians serving the most marginalized individuals in the US healthcare system. Drawing on years of fieldwork in a community psychiatry outreach team, Brodwin traces the ethical dilemmas and everyday struggles of front line providers. On the street, in staff room debates, or in private confessions, these psychiatrists and social workers confront ongoing challenges to their self-image as competent and compassionate advocates. At times they openly question the coercion and forced-dependency built into the current system of care. At other times they justify their use of extreme power in the face of loud opposition from clients. This in-depth study exposes the fault lines in today's community psychiatry. It shows how people working deep inside the system struggle to maintain their ideals and manage a chronic sense of futility. Their commentaries about the obligatory and the forbidden also suggest ways to bridge formal bioethics and the realities of mental health practice. The experiences of these clinicians pose a single overarching question: how should we bear responsibility for the most vulnerable among us?

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Terrain of Everyday Ethics

1. Genealogy of the Treatment Model

2. Expert knowledge and Encounters with Futility

3. Treatment Plans

4. Representative Payeeships

5. Commitment Orders

6. Coercion, Confidentiality, and the Moral Contours of Work

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780520954526

0520954521

OCLC:

824701380