- Title Pages
- Series Foreword
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- I Foundational Questions
- 1 Contested Boundaries: Psychiatry, Disease, and Diagnosis
- 2 Moot Questions in Psychiatric Ethics
- 3 The Ethics of Psychotherapy
- 4 Character Virtues in Psychiatric Practice
- II Capacity, Coercion, and Consent
- 5 Psychiatric Advance Directives and the Treatment of Committed Patients
- 6 Denying Autonomy in Order to Create It: The Paradox of Forcing Treatment upon Addicts
- 7 End-Stage Anorexia: Criteria for Competence to Refuse Treatment
- 8 “Personality Disorder” and Capacity to Make Treatment Decisions
- III Violence, Trauma, and Treatment
- 9 Sanctity of Human Life in War: Ethics and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- 10 The Experience of Violent Injury for Young African American Men: The Meaning of Being a “Sucker”
- 11 The Psychological Impact of Rape Victims’ Experiences with the Legal, Medical, and Mental Health Systems
- IV Addiction
- 12 Addiction as Accomplishment: The Discursive Construction of Disease
- 13 The Ethics of Addiction
- 14 Myths about the Treatment of Addiction
- 15 Ethical Considerations in Caring for People Living with Addictions
- V Mental Illness and the Courts
- 16 Confidentiality and the Prediction of Dangerousness in Psychiatry
- 17 Madness versus Badness: The Ethical Tension between the Recovery Movement and Forensic Psychiatry
- 18 Ethical Considerations of Multiple Roles in Forensic Services
- 19 Watch Your Language: A Review of the Use of Stigmatizing Language by Canadian Judges
- VI Therapeutic Boundaries
- 20 Boundary Violation Ethics: Some Conceptual Clarifications
- 21 The Price of a Gift: An Approach to Receiving Gifts from Patients in Psychiatric Practice
- 22 How Certain Boundaries and Ethics Diminish Therapeutic Effectiveness
- 23 Boundary Issues in Social Work: Managing Dual Relationships
- 24 Patient-Targeted Googling: The Ethics of Searching Online for Patient Information
- 25 Professional Boundaries in the Era of the Internet
- Contributors
- Permissions and Credits
- Index
Ethical Considerations in Caring for People Living with Addictions
Ethical Considerations in Caring for People Living with Addictions
- Chapter:
- (p.223) 15 Ethical Considerations in Caring for People Living with Addictions
- Source:
- Applied Ethics in Mental Health Care
- Author(s):
Laura Weiss Roberts
Kim Bullock
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
The care of people living with addiction is ethically complex work. Addiction is stigmatized in our society and clinical services for addiction-related conditions are underdeveloped, raising many ethical issues related to respect, confidentiality, and justice. Addictions of all kinds are associated, by definition, with a lack of personal control over the addictive behavior and are often linked with intermittent or enduring cognitive deficits, creating concerns about affected individuals’ capacities for autonomy and shared decision-making with caregivers. Some addictions are associated with risky and/or illegal activities, introducing very difficult considerations related to dangerousness, self-neglect, or self-injury and potential harm toward others. Moreover, the history of treatment for addiction has been riddled with approaches that emphasize punitive consequences, raising issues pertaining to beneficence, nonmaleficence, and medical professionalism. Finally, addiction often co-occurs with other health conditions, which may be difficult to recognize and burdensome to treat because of the addiction, raising ethical issues related to clinical competence. For these reasons, every aspect of clinical care for addictive disorders should be viewed as having important ethical meaning and implications.
Keywords: Addiction, Ethics, Respect for Persons, Autonomy, Beneficence, Professionalism
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- Title Pages
- Series Foreword
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- I Foundational Questions
- 1 Contested Boundaries: Psychiatry, Disease, and Diagnosis
- 2 Moot Questions in Psychiatric Ethics
- 3 The Ethics of Psychotherapy
- 4 Character Virtues in Psychiatric Practice
- II Capacity, Coercion, and Consent
- 5 Psychiatric Advance Directives and the Treatment of Committed Patients
- 6 Denying Autonomy in Order to Create It: The Paradox of Forcing Treatment upon Addicts
- 7 End-Stage Anorexia: Criteria for Competence to Refuse Treatment
- 8 “Personality Disorder” and Capacity to Make Treatment Decisions
- III Violence, Trauma, and Treatment
- 9 Sanctity of Human Life in War: Ethics and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- 10 The Experience of Violent Injury for Young African American Men: The Meaning of Being a “Sucker”
- 11 The Psychological Impact of Rape Victims’ Experiences with the Legal, Medical, and Mental Health Systems
- IV Addiction
- 12 Addiction as Accomplishment: The Discursive Construction of Disease
- 13 The Ethics of Addiction
- 14 Myths about the Treatment of Addiction
- 15 Ethical Considerations in Caring for People Living with Addictions
- V Mental Illness and the Courts
- 16 Confidentiality and the Prediction of Dangerousness in Psychiatry
- 17 Madness versus Badness: The Ethical Tension between the Recovery Movement and Forensic Psychiatry
- 18 Ethical Considerations of Multiple Roles in Forensic Services
- 19 Watch Your Language: A Review of the Use of Stigmatizing Language by Canadian Judges
- VI Therapeutic Boundaries
- 20 Boundary Violation Ethics: Some Conceptual Clarifications
- 21 The Price of a Gift: An Approach to Receiving Gifts from Patients in Psychiatric Practice
- 22 How Certain Boundaries and Ethics Diminish Therapeutic Effectiveness
- 23 Boundary Issues in Social Work: Managing Dual Relationships
- 24 Patient-Targeted Googling: The Ethics of Searching Online for Patient Information
- 25 Professional Boundaries in the Era of the Internet
- Contributors
- Permissions and Credits
- Index
