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Grounding mental health in bioethics

Nature Mental Health volume 1, pages 813–814 (2023)Cite this article

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The mental health field could benefit from input from different scholarly perspectives1. Given the issues raised for health justice by mental healthcare in our unequal societies, here we focus on three ways in which bioethics — an inquiry into the social, legal and ethical ramifications of health science that promotes principles, values and evidence — can help improve the treatment of mental suffering.

There is much stigma and a lack of compassion toward mental suffering. Judgments are frequently made about what an ill person can or cannot do, and what society and the care system should do in response. Bioethics can uncover this moral backdrop, and also warn against the aggravation of suffering when treatment itself is inadequate2,3.

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Fig. 1: Grounding mental health in bioethics.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Paola Buedo, Timothy Daly.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bioethics Program, FLACSO Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Paola Buedo & Timothy Daly

  2. Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland

    Paola Buedo

  3. Science Norms Democracy UMR 8011, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

    Timothy Daly

Authors
  1. Paola Buedo
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  2. Timothy Daly
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Paola Buedo or Timothy Daly.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Buedo, P., Daly, T. Grounding mental health in bioethics. Nat. Mental Health 1, 813–814 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00146-5

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