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Mental Illness and Institutionalization

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Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics

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Abstract

A brief outline of the classical psychiatric hospital as a custodial, total, and closed institution is offered against the background of changing conceptions of mental illness, developed after the establishment of psychiatry as a medical specialty at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The historical development shows a trajectory fraught with ethical dilemmas associated with an ethics of coercion and control. The psychiatric hospital as a place of confinement and therapeutic milieu has lost much of its medical justification. The ethics of personal, interpersonal, and institutional relations is emphasized.

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References

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Further Reading

  • Sadock, B. J., Sadock, V. A., & Ruiz, P. (Eds.). (2009). Kaplan and Sadock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Bioethics and Department of Psychiatry, Clinical Hospital, University of Chile, Diagonal Paraguay 265, Office 806, Santiago, Chile

    Fernando Lolas

Authors
  1. Fernando Lolas
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Correspondence to Fernando Lolas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Duquesne University Center for Healthcare Ethics, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Henk ten Have

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Lolas, F. (2015). Mental Illness and Institutionalization. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_291-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_291-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05544-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

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