Mental Illness and Public Health Care

This book focuses the debate on three major issues relative to mental illness and public health care and will be of interest to all psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health care-givers. Drs. Gerard Elfstrom and Theodore Benditt open with a review of whether or not the involuntary commitment of mentally ill persons can be said to be morally proper or permissible in modern society. They address questions such as whether danger to oneself or others suffices as a reason to commit a...
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This book focuses the debate on three major issues relative to mental illness and public health care and will be of interest to all psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health care-givers. Drs. Gerard Elfstrom and Theodore Benditt open with a review of whether or not the involuntary commitment of mentally ill persons can be said to be morally proper or permissible in modern society. They address questions such as whether danger to oneself or others suffices as a reason to commit a mentally ill person contrary to their will, and who is competent to make such a determination. The second issue considers the question of what should be done when a mental health professional is convinced that one of his or her patients poses a threat to someone else in society. In particular it discusses whether psychotherapists should break patient confidentiality and warn those whom they believe are in danger at their patient's hands. The final articles cover the very broad issue of how to determine proper psychiatric care within the parameters of our present healthcare delivery system. They address issues such as the shift towards fewer doctor patient consultation and increased dependence on pharmacological treatments, to the economic use of publicly funded managed care for behavioural health services. The final article discusses that whenever the use of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and pharmacological interventions are both in accord with professional codes of conduct and approximately equal in terms of their effectiveness, CBT should be the treatment of choice because it poses an ethical advantage.