Abstract
Ethical issues in mental health services are present on various levels – from individual service access and provision to structural issues regarding the organization and management of health care systems and global health care priorities. During the twentieth century, the concepts of patient autonomy, privacy and confidentiality became central for medical ethics. For mental health patients, these concepts are central also, but their application is often more complex than for patients with somatic diseases. First and foremost, mental disorders may affect a person’s sense of self, their experiences, thoughts, beliefs and capacities in ways that make it difficult to ascertain a person’s will and autonomy.
Ethical aspects of the provision of mental health services globally concern issues like coercion, stigmatization and discrimination, access to services of particularly vulnerable populations as well as access during disasters. Like with other health care services also, with mental health there exists a wide global treatment gap between high- and low-income countries. Additional ethical aspects concern underdiagnosis and overmedication issues and provision of evidence-based treatment.
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Simm, K. (2015). Mental Health Services. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_287-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_287-1
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