Abuse of psychiatry

Gender, human rights and cultural diversity: reflections on a career in transcultural psychiatry

The three issues of gender equality, human rights and cultural diversity have dominated my organizational commitments, research, and clinical practice in transcultural psychiatry. These issues are intertwined in many ways and have broad implications for transcultural psychiatry. With increasing globalization, psychiatrists in many countries are likely to be treating patients who have migrated from different cultures and who may have been exposed to a variety of traumatic experiences that have a profound impact on their mental health. Of particular concern is the group of torture survivors and the elucidation of their symptom manifestations, as well as effective therapeutic interventions, which clearly show how human rights issues are linked to research and clinical psychiatry. The analyses of how different ethnic groups use psychiatric services, epitomize how important it is to pay attention to gender aspects in the interpretation of the findings and their therapeutic, as well as policy, implications.

[Patients' rights: a threat to caregivers?]

In recent years, advocacy groups promoting patients' rights have lead to significant changes including the implementation of policies reducing measures of seclusion and restraint of patients with mental disorders. These policies are unanimous in that constraint is to be used as a solution of last resort and must be applied only under unique and exceptional circumstances. The reaction of healthcare workers to these new policies and to increase attention of patients'rights is often ignored in the current literature. Indeed, it is not rare for healthcare workers to come to think that the patients' rights supersede their own. In this article, this issue is examined from two perspectives. First, the author examines experiences of healthcare workers followed by a presentation of ethical and legal issues arising from the policies which promote the reduction of seclusion and restraint measures.