Bioethical considerations on a psychiatric case study

Abstract

This article analyzes a psychiatric clinical case which occurred to the Ethics Committee at the Catholic Hospitary Institute of Brescia (Italy).

As a solution to this clinical story, and with reference to the international documentation about human rights – particularly mental ill people rights – the Author assumes an ethical perspective according to which the good and the welfare of the weakest is “my own good”.

The analysis of this case shows that it is a precise duty of medical science to treat every sick person as a whole, keeping full attention to his/her personal history with the physical, mental, and social aspects involved.

Through this case, the Author claims that taking mental illness into deep consideration is a real bioethical issue; as a matter of fact, this topic does not always represent a component of classical bioethical literature.