The Virtuous Psychiatrist: Character Ethics in Psychiatric Practice (International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry) - Hardcover

Radden, Jennifer; Sadler, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195389379 ISBN 13: 9780195389371

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2010

Synopsis

The context for this interdisciplinary work by a philosopher and a clinician is the psychiatric care provided to those with severe mental disorders. Such a setting makes distinctive moral demands on the very character of the practitioner, it is shown, calling for special virtues and greater virtue than many other practice settings. In a practice so attentive to the patient's self identity, the authors promote a heightened awareness of cultural and particularly gender issues. By elucidating the nature of the moral psychology and character of the good psychiatrist, this work provides a sustained application of virtue theory to clinical practice. With its roots in Aristotelian writing, The Virtuous Psychiatrist presents virtue traits as habits, able to be cultivated and enhanced through training. The book describes these traits, and how they can be habituated in clinical training. A turn towards virtue theory within philosophy during the last several decades has resulted in important research on professional ethics. By approaching the ethics of psychiatric professionals in these virtue terms, Radden and Sadler's work provides an original application of this theorizing to practice. Of interest to both theorists and practitioners, the book explores the tension between the model of enduring character implicit in virtue theory and the segmented personae of role-specific moral responses. Clinical examples are provided, based upon dramaturgical vignettes (caseplays) which illustrate both the interactions of the case participants as well as the inner monologue of the clinician protagonist.

About this title

About the Author:

Jennifer Radden is Professor of Philosophy, U Mass Boston, and editor of The Nature of Melancholy, The Philosophy of Psychiatry, and Moody Minds Distempered (all OUP).

John Sadler is Daniel W. Foster Professor of Medical Ethics, UT Southwestern Medical School

Review:

"This is a worthwhile and interesting book...The exploration of the problems unique to psychiatry versus other medical specialists is handled quite well. The chapter on gender issues is both thoughtful and insightful. This is a very useful and important contribution to the ethics of psychiatry."--Doody's

"...Jennifer Radden and John Sadler have written a great book that is especially recommended to all working in the healthcare system and in the psychiatric field in particular. Beside its inspiring potential for practitioners, the Virtuous Psychiatrist is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of psychiatry as a field that needs its own ethical standards. It not only inspires the debate on norms and values in other areas of the profession, but once more reveals the need for putting the issue of psychiatric practice right into the centre of deep philosophical reflection." --Metapsychology

"The authors are talented writers who can inspire virtue in its many manifestations...this is an ambitious and provocative text whose thesis deserves the consideration of our field." --American Journal Psychiatry

"(The author's) discussion of these complex issues is thoughtful and scholarly yet readable and accessible. The book is a timely antidote to an excessively technological psychiatry and one might hope that journal clubs could find some time for it in addition to the usual diet of evidence-based medicine." -- The British Journal of Psychiatry

"It is an exceptional volume that should have a place in the library of all reflective and morally serious mental health professionals. One of the book's many strengths is that it is a collaboration between a philosphy of psychiatric practice, ethics and policy, Jennifer Radden, and a philosophically oriented psychiatrist who has done extensive work at the intersection of values theory, psychiatric diagnostic classification and ethics, John Sadler. The product of their collaboration is a beautiful study of the place and power of virtue or character ethics, which emphasizes the virtues and ideals of moral excellence in psychiatric practice." -- Psychological Medicine

"The Virtuous Psychiatrist is an interesting read. It does an excellent job in advancing the existing conversation and debate about such topics as: the fundamentally interpersonal nature of psychiatric practice and training, the social-cultural construction of mental illnesses and their diagnoses, the benefits and burdens of the consumer and biomedical models of psychiatry, and the affective/emotional components of virtues." -- Jeffrey Kirby, MD, MA, Associate Professor & Ethics Consultant, Department of Bioethics; Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

"In sum, The Virtuous Psychiatrist is an excellent and thorough extension of a virtue ethics framework to the practice of mental healthcare. Radden and Sadler's work was both well-researched and well-practiced. As a result, this piece is an inspiring read for those in mental health care and provides multiple applications for those in bioethics, psychiatry, counseling, empirical moral psychology, philosophical practice, and disability studies." -- Philosophical Practice

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0195389379
• ISBN 13: 9780195389371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256