Psychiatric treatment of the VIP: some paradoxical risks.

One might expect that VIPs-individuals with wealth, fame, or power-would typically receive excellent care when treated for psychiatric disorders. Often, this is the case, but paradoxically, VIP status may compromise the quality of psychiatric treatment. In this article, we present four case examples, representing disguised amalgamations of actual cases from our experience, demonstrating how VIP patients may sometimes receive suboptimal psychiatric care. These cases show certain similarities; typically, there was no serious doubt about the general nature of the treatment that should be undertaken, but the treatment team was unable to deliver that treatment in the usual manner because of various outside pressures created by the VIP status of the patient and by the patient's entourage. One possible solution to this problem, when feasible, is to assign treatment to a team specifically experienced with VIP patients. A strong and united treatment team, accustomed to the unusual difficulties and pressures often encountered with VIP patients, can be prepared to act promptly, firmly, and unanimously to devise an appropriate treatment plan and then maintain this plan true to its course despite these pressures.

Financial conflicts of interest and the ethical obligations of medical school faculty and the profession.

Despite their potential benefits, relationships linking medical school faculty and the pharmaceutical and device industries may also challenge the professional value of primacy of patient welfare, a point highlighted in a recent Institute of Medicine report. Academic medical centers and professors have the added professional obligation to ensure the unbiased, evidence-based education of future doctors. This essay argues that faculty financial conflicts of interest may threaten this obligation by propagating the bias introduced by these relationships to students. This could occur directly through the process of curriculum determination and delivery, and also indirectly through the "hidden curriculum," which deserves particular attention, as its lessons may conflict with those professed in the formal curriculum. The essay concludes with guiding principles to consider when developing a conflict of interest policy at academic medical centers.

A plea for pragmatism in clinical research ethics.

Pragmatism is a distinctive approach to clinical research ethics that can guide bioethicists and members of institutional review boards (IRBs) as they struggle to balance the competing values of promoting medical research and protecting human subjects participating in it. After defining our understanding of pragmatism in the setting of clinical research ethics, we show how a pragmatic approach can provide guidance not only for the day-to-day functioning of the IRB, but also for evaluation of policy standards, such as the one that addresses acceptable risks for healthy children in clinical research trials. We also show how pragmatic considerations might influence the debate about the use of deception in clinical research. Finally, we show how a pragmatic approach, by regarding the promotion of human research and the protection of human subjects as equally important values, helps to break down the false dichotomy between science and ethics in clinical research.

The price of a gift: an approach to receiving gifts from patients in psychiatric practice.

When a patient or patient's family presents a psychiatrist with a gift, the clinician is challenged to maintain appropriate professional boundaries but have the flexibility to respond with warmth and appreciation. The psychiatrist must consider such factors as the intention of the gift, its value to the patient, and the anticipated effect of accepting or refusing it on the patient and the treatment. Psychiatric practitioners are ethically obligated to consider patients' best interests when deciding about how to handle the offer of a gift. Ethical deliberations about such situations occur on a case-by-case basis and require careful analysis of how to promote the patient's best interest while adhering to professional ethics. In this article, members of the McLean Hospital Ethics Committee present a pragmatic model for managing the presentation of a gift from a patient or a patient's family member. The pragmatic model, which focuses on the practical results of accepting or declining the gift, minimizes the risk of exploiting the patient by accepting a gift or hurting the patient by declining it. We present five clinical cases that raise ethical dilemmas concerning patient gift giving in psychiatry and discuss each case from the standpoint of the pragmatic model.

Patient-targeted googling: the ethics of searching online for patient information.

With the growth of the Internet, psychiatrists can now search online for a wide range of information about patients. Psychiatrists face challenges of maintaining professional boundaries with patients in many circumstances, but little consideration has been given to the practice of searching online for information about patients, an act we refer to as patient-targeted Googling (PTG). Psychiatrists are not the only health care providers who can investigate their patients online, but they may be especially likely to engage in PTG because of the unique relationships involved in their clinical practice. Before searching online for a patient, psychiatrists should consider such factors as the intention of searching, the anticipated effect of gaining information online, and its potential value or risk for the treatment. The psychiatrist is obligated to act in a way that respects the patient's best interests and that adheres to professional ethics. In this article, we propose a pragmatic model for considering PTG that focuses on practical results of searches and that aims to minimize the risk of exploiting patients. We describe three cases of PTG, highlighting important ethical dilemmas in multiple practice settings. Each case is discussed from the standpoint of the pragmatic model.

Ethics consultation to PACT teams: balancing client autonomy and clinical necessity.

The Program for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) is a community-based treatment program for people with severe and persistent mental illness, who have been underserved by traditional levels of care and are thought to be at high risk for rehospitalization. Within this model can be found a number of nontraditional treatment practices, some of which challenge the balance between client autonomy and paternalism, and can lead to clinical impasses. In this article we present three clinical cases (with discussions) to illustrate the most common ethical dilemmas that our PACT team has faced in assisting clients with their finances, legal terms of probation, and personal safety. We describe our use of professional ethics consultation to help us manage these dilemmas, enhance client informed consent, and promote collaborative care within the PACT model. Such ethics consultation may be useful to other PACT teams struggling to resolve clinical and ethical dilemmas by respecting both the autonomy and best interests of their clients.

The use of palliative sedation for existential distress: a psychiatric perspective.

This article introduces a structure for standardization in the ongoing debate about the application of palliative sedation for psychological and existential suffering at the end of life. We differentiate the phenomenon of existential distress from the more general one of existential suffering, defining existential distress as a special case of existential suffering that applies to persons with terminal illness. We introduce both a clinical classification system of existential distress based on proximity to expected death and a decision-making process for considering palliative sedation (represented by the mnemonic, TIRED). Neuropsychiatric clinical cases will be used to demonstrate some of the concepts and ethical arguments.

Reductionism, eclecticism, and pragmatism in psychiatry: the dialectic of clinical explanation.

Explanatory models in psychiatry reflect what clinicians deem valuable in rendering people's behavior intelligible and thus help guide treatment choices for mental illnesses. This article outlines some key scientific and ethical principles of clinical explanation in twenty-first century psychiatry. Recent work in philosophy of science, clinical psychiatry, and psychiatric ethics are critically reviewed in order to elucidate conceptual underpinnings of contemporary explanatory models. Many explanatory models in psychiatry are reductionistic or eclectic. The former restrict options for diagnostic and therapeutic paradigm choice, while the latter lack a well-defined theoretical basis. These two methodological approaches stand in a dialectical relation to one another insofar as clinicians often move from one approach to its antithesis, ultimately seeking a synthesis of the two approaches that satisfies clinical needs. Pragmatic considerations can help to transcend the reductionism/eclecticism dialectic. In the absence of a completed science of mental disorders, psychiatrists must tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty as they strive to integrate diverse explanatory concepts in a rigorous and evidence-based fashion. A pragmatic explanatory model in clinical psychiatry must focus on favorable treatment outcomes for patients by respecting the pluralistic, participatory, and provisional nature of psychiatric explanation.