1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786155803321

Autore

Brodwin Paul

Titolo

Everyday Ethics : Voices from the Front Line of Community Psychiatry / / Paul Brodwin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA : , : University of California Press, , [2013]

©2013

ISBN

0-520-95452-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (225 p.)

Disciplina

649.122

Soggetti

Community mental health services - Professional ethics

Community psychiatry

Psychiatrists

Community Mental Health Services

Community Psychiatry - ethics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

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

Sommario/riassunto

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?