The operation of power within psychotherapeutic practice is explored in this article through an analysis of radio therapeutic discourse. A Foucauldian methodological approach is adopted where the operation of power is conceptualized in terms of practices concerning the constitution and regulation of the self and which employs the analytics of problematization and ethical self-formation. Ten complete calls were examined for the effect of therapeutic intervention on callers' accounts of their problems; two calls are reported in detail. It was found that (...) through therapeutic problematization callers' worries were restructured so that the locus of concern was shifted towards the caller's relationship with themselves, in particular providing the means through which callers might regulate their own behaviour and normalize their future possible conduct. In this way callers were invited to account for themselves as both the target of and the responsible agent in their own cure. Thus power is linked with psychotherapeutic practice — in this setting — through the production of certain kinds of person with certain kinds of responsibilities. Finally, it is argued that here the psychotherapeutic process is more moral than `psychological' and that the ethical operation of therapeutic discourse is linked to our contemporary `therapeutic' moral order. (shrink)

Good teaching relies on a firm grasp of the communication process. In this innovative text Bob Hodge presents common pitfalls in the communication of teachers, and shows where they are most likely to mistake the communication of pupils. He uses practical examples which enable the reader to see an immediate and direct connection with classroom practises, making principles easier to understand and apply.

Little appears to have changed in the western imagining of the Pacific region since ancient times. While metaphors of redemption and condemnation, paradise and paradise lost, utopia and dystopia persist, Australia's place in the Pacific will remain elusive and insecure. The essay is in two parts. The first half discusses the metaphors implicit in the names given to the region, the South Seas, the Pacific and Oceania, and relates their imagining in the early European expeditions of Balboa and Magellan, in (...) Hodges' paintings done on Cook's second voyage in the 18th century, and in conceptualizations of Australian identity from the colonial period to the mid-20th century writing of historians such as Hancock, Barnard and Manning Clark. The second half of the essay traces the repetition of the same metaphors in the theories of de Certeau and Baudrillard, and in the writings of contemporary Australian critics, including McKenzie Wark, Ross Gibson and Paul Carter. (shrink)

Classical logic has been attacked by adherents of rival, anti-realist logical systems: Ian Rumfitt comes to its defence. He considers the nature of logic, and how to arbitrate between different logics. He argues that classical logic may dispense with the principle of bivalence, and may thus be liberated from the dead hand of classical semantics.

Plato of Athens, who laid the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition and in range and depth ranks among its greatest practitioners, was born to a prosperous and politically active family circa 427 BC. In early life an admirer of Socrates, Plato later founded the first institution of higher learning in the West, the Academy, among whose many notable alumni was Aristotle. Traditionally ascribed to Plato are thirty-five dialogues developing Socrates' dialectic method and composed with great stylistic virtuosity, together with (...) the Apology and thirteen letters. The four works in this volume recount the circumstances of Socrates' trial and execution in 399 BC. In Euthyphro, set in the weeks before the trial, Socrates and Euthyphro attempt to define holiness. In Apology, Socrates answers his accusers at trial and unapologetically defends his philosophical career. In Crito, a discussion of justice and injustice explains Socrates' refusal of Crito's offer to finance his escape from prison. And in Phaedo, Socrates discusses the concept of an afterlife and offers arguments for the immortality of the soul. This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition by Harold North Fowler, offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship." -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of whether it is ever permissible to grant a request for physician-aid-in-dying (PAD) from an individual suffering from treatment-resistant depression. I assume for the sake of argument that PAD is sometimes permissible. There are three requirements for PAD: suffering, prognosis, and competence. First, an individual must be suffering from an illness or injury which is sufficient to cause serious, ongoing hardship. Second, one must have exhausted effective treatment options, and one’s prospects for recovery (...) must be poor. Third, the individual must be judged competent to request PAD. I argue that many cases of treatment-resistant depression meet the first two requirements. Thus, the key question concerns the third. I consider four features of depression that might compromise a person’s decision-making capacity. Ultimately, I conclude that PAD requests from depressed patients can be permissibly granted in some circumstances. (shrink)

We consider two formalisations of the notion of a compositionalsemantics for a language, and find some equivalent statements in termsof substitutions. We prove a theorem stating necessary and sufficientconditions for the existence of a canonical compositional semanticsextending a given partial semantics, after discussing what features onewould want such an extension to have. The theorem involves someassumptions about semantical categories in the spirit of Husserl andTarski.

We consider two formalisations of the notion of a compositionalsemantics for a language, and find some equivalent statements in termsof substitutions. We prove a theorem stating necessary and sufficientconditions for the existence of a canonical compositional semanticsextending a given partial semantics, after discussing what features onewould want such an extension to have. The theorem involves someassumptions about semantical categories in the spirit of Husserl andTarski.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"The Fittest Man in the Kingdom":Thomas Reid and the Glasgow Chair of Moral PhilosophyPaul Wood (bio)Paul Wood Paul Wood is at the Department of History, University of Victoria, PO Box 3045, MS 7381, Victoria BC V8W 3P4 Canada. email: [email protected] August 1996Revised January 1997Notes. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a plenary session of the 23rd International Hume Conference held at the University of Nottingham. For (...) comments and/or references, the author wishes to thank Roger Emerson, Carol Gibson-Wood, Knud Haakonssen, Ian Simpson Ross, Stephen Snobelen, M. A. Stewart, and the anonymous Hume Studies referees. For permission to cite and quote from manuscripts, he is grateful to the Keeper of the Manuscripts of Scotland as well as to the Librarians of Aberdeen University Library, Edinburgh University Library, Glasgow University Archives and Business Records Centre, Glasgow University Library (Department of Special Collections), the Mitchell Library Glasgow, and Dr. Williams' Library.1. Although little information survives regarding Law's teaching, we do know that he discussed Pufendorf in his classes; see Christine Mary King [Shepherd], "Philosophy and Science in the Arts Curriculum of the Scottish Universities in the Seventeenth Century," (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1974), 177. Carmichael's edition of Pufendorf first appeared in Glasgow in 1718, and a second edition was published in Edinburgh in 1724 while Hume was still a student there.2. The surviving correspondence between the two men from this period is to be found in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I 32-35; 36-40; 45-48 (hereafter abbreviated as HL).3. The first detailed discussion of the 1745 election appeared in the introduction to David Hume, A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, edited by Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967). This account has recently been challenged in Roger L. Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh and the 'Project' at Glasgow: The Politics of Hume's Attempts to become a Professor," in Hume and Hume's Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 1-22; and M. A. Stewart, The Kirk and the Infidel (Lancaster: Lancaster University Publications Office, 1995). For historically sensitive contextual analysis of Hume's philosophical relations with Hutcheson, see inter alia James Moore, "Hume and Hutcheson," in Stewart and Wright, 23-57, and M. A. Stewart, Warmth in the Cause of Virtue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).4. In January 1752, "Mr. Smith read an Account of some of Mr. David Hume's Essays on Commerce" to the Society, and Hume was elected a member in 1753; see Notices and Documents Illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow, During the Greater Part of Last Century, edited by W. J. Duncan (Glasgow: T. D. Morison, 1886), 132-133. Hume's failed candidacy is discussed in Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh," 14-16, and Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 112-113. Smith's Glasgow colleague from 1751 to 1755, William Cullen, was also sympathetic to Hume's philosophy, as was John Millar, who was elected Professor of Law in 1761. On Cullen and Hume see J.R.R. Christie, "Ether and the Science of Chemistry: 1740-1790," in Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories 1740-1900, edited by G. N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 90-96.5. David Hume to William Strahan, 26 October 1775, HL II 301.6. See, for example, The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir William Hamilton, 4th ed. (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1854), 30n; James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London: Macmillan, 1875), 36; James Veitch, "Philosophy in the Scottish Universities," Mind 2 (1877): 207-234 (209).7. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (London and New York: Macmillan, 1895); William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900); idem., Adam Smith as Student and Professor (Glasgow: Jackson... (shrink)

This discussion paper continues the debate over risk‐related standards of mental competence which appears in Bioethics 5. Dan Brock there defends an approach to mental competence in patients which defines it as being relative to differing standards, more or less rigorous depending on the degree of risk involved in proposed treatments. But Mark Wicclair raises a problem for this approach: if significantly different levels of risk attach, respectively, to accepting and refusing the same treatment, then it is possible, on this (...) account, for a patient to be considered competent to accept, but not refuse, the treatment, or vice versa. I argue that this puzzle does not constitute a genuine problem for a risk‐related standard. To this end I focus on the situation where, of two mutually exclusive options, one is riskier, but offering more pronounced benefit, while the other is safer, but offering less benefit. I argue for this proposition: it can take far less insight to know that the safe option is good than to know that the risky option is better. Now say one is actually informed enough to know that the safe option is good, but not enough to know whether the risky option is better; in such a case one is competent to say yes to that first option (the safe one), but not to say yes to the other. (I argue in passing that Pascal's Wager can be interpreted as having precisely this deliberative structure.) I thus conclude that cases do indeed exist where one can be competent to say yes but not no, or vice versa; and that it is thus not an anomaly in the risk‐related standard that it entails the existence of such cases. (shrink)

Arguments strong enough to justify skeptical theism will be strong enough to justify the position that every claim about God is empirically unfalsifiable. This fact is problematic because that position licenses further arguments which are clearly unreasonable, but which the skeptical theist cannot consistently accept as such. Avoiding this result while still achieving the theoretical objectives looked for in skeptical theism appears to demand an impossibly nuanced position.

BackgroundMoral distress (MD) is an emotional and psychological response to morally challenging dilemmas. Moral distress is experienced frequently by nurses in the intensive care unit (ICU) and can result in emotional anguish, work dissatisfaction, poor patient outcomes, and high levels of nurse turnover. Opportunities to discuss ethically challenging situations may lessen MD and its associated sequela.ObjectiveThe purpose of this project was to develop, implement, and evaluate the impact of nursing ethics huddles on participants’ MD, clinical ethics knowledge, work satisfaction, and (...) patient care among ICU nurses.Sample and SettingThe sample, 32 nurses from three ICU settings in an 800-bed tertiary academic medical center, participated in six nursing ethics huddles over a two-month period.MethodsAlvita K. Nathaniel’s Theory of Moral Reckoning guided development of the nursing ethics huddle process.1 The Moral Distress Thermometer was administered at three data points: baseline level of MD, and pre- and post-huddle to determine changes in the subjects’ level of MD.2 Focused content analysis was used to analyze qualitative responses from questionnaires about the subjects’ perception of the effect of the huddles on work satisfaction and patient care. Knowledge attainment was evaluated via open-ended short-answer questions.ResultsOverall, use of nurse-ethicist-led nursing ethics huddles was associated with improved quality of work life, patient care, and clinical ethics knowledge. The change in pre- and post-nursing ethics huddles MD scores was statistically significant (p < 0.0001). (shrink)

How to draw the line between depression-as-disorder and non-pathological depressive symptoms continues to be a contested issue in psychiatry. Relatively few philosophers have waded into this debate, but the tools of philosophical analysis are quite relevant to it. In this paper, I defend a particular answer to this question, the Contextual approach.On this view, depression is a disorder if and only if it is a disproportionate response to a justifying cause or else is unconnected to any justifying cause. I present (...) four objections to this approach and then defend it from them. Along the way, I explain why it matters whether we get this question right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"The Fittest Man in the Kingdom":Thomas Reid and the Glasgow Chair of Moral PhilosophyPaul Wood (bio)Paul Wood Paul Wood is at the Department of History, University of Victoria, PO Box 3045, MS 7381, Victoria BC V8W 3P4 Canada. email: [email protected] August 1996Revised January 1997Notes. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a plenary session of the 23rd International Hume Conference held at the University of Nottingham. For (...) comments and/or references, the author wishes to thank Roger Emerson, Carol Gibson-Wood, Knud Haakonssen, Ian Simpson Ross, Stephen Snobelen, M. A. Stewart, and the anonymous Hume Studies referees. For permission to cite and quote from manuscripts, he is grateful to the Keeper of the Manuscripts of Scotland as well as to the Librarians of Aberdeen University Library, Edinburgh University Library, Glasgow University Archives and Business Records Centre, Glasgow University Library (Department of Special Collections), the Mitchell Library Glasgow, and Dr. Williams' Library.1. Although little information survives regarding Law's teaching, we do know that he discussed Pufendorf in his classes; see Christine Mary King [Shepherd], "Philosophy and Science in the Arts Curriculum of the Scottish Universities in the Seventeenth Century," (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1974), 177. Carmichael's edition of Pufendorf first appeared in Glasgow in 1718, and a second edition was published in Edinburgh in 1724 while Hume was still a student there.2. The surviving correspondence between the two men from this period is to be found in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), I 32-35; 36-40; 45-48 (hereafter abbreviated as HL).3. The first detailed discussion of the 1745 election appeared in the introduction to David Hume, A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh, edited by Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967). This account has recently been challenged in Roger L. Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh and the 'Project' at Glasgow: The Politics of Hume's Attempts to become a Professor," in Hume and Hume's Connexions, edited by M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 1-22; and M. A. Stewart, The Kirk and the Infidel (Lancaster: Lancaster University Publications Office, 1995). For historically sensitive contextual analysis of Hume's philosophical relations with Hutcheson, see inter alia James Moore, "Hume and Hutcheson," in Stewart and Wright, 23-57, and M. A. Stewart, Warmth in the Cause of Virtue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).4. In January 1752, "Mr. Smith read an Account of some of Mr. David Hume's Essays on Commerce" to the Society, and Hume was elected a member in 1753; see Notices and Documents Illustrative of the Literary History of Glasgow, During the Greater Part of Last Century, edited by W. J. Duncan (Glasgow: T. D. Morison, 1886), 132-133. Hume's failed candidacy is discussed in Emerson, "The 'Affair' at Edinburgh," 14-16, and Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 112-113. Smith's Glasgow colleague from 1751 to 1755, William Cullen, was also sympathetic to Hume's philosophy, as was John Millar, who was elected Professor of Law in 1761. On Cullen and Hume see J.R.R. Christie, "Ether and the Science of Chemistry: 1740-1790," in Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the History of Ether Theories 1740-1900, edited by G. N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 90-96.5. David Hume to William Strahan, 26 October 1775, HL II 301.6. See, for example, The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D., edited by Sir William Hamilton, 4th ed. (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1854), 30n; James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London: Macmillan, 1875), 36; James Veitch, "Philosophy in the Scottish Universities," Mind 2 (1877): 207-234 (209).7. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (London and New York: Macmillan, 1895); William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900); idem., Adam Smith as Student and Professor (Glasgow: Jackson... (shrink)

At the bottom of all human activities are “values,” the conviction that some things “ought to be” and others not. Science, however, with its immense interest in mere facts seems to lack all understanding of such‘requiredness.’… A science … which would seriously admit nothing but indifferent facts … could not fail to destroy itself.

He concludes with an assessment of democracy's strengths and limitations as the font of political legitimacy. The book offers a lucid and accessible introduction to urgent ongoing conversations about the sources of political allegiance.

We trace two logical ideas further back than they have previously been traced. One is the idea of using diagrams to prove that certain logical premises do—or don’t—have certain logical consequences. This idea is usually credited to Venn, and before him Euler, and before him Leibniz. We find the idea correctly and vigorously used by Abū al-Barakāt in 12th century Baghdad. The second is the idea that in formal logic, P logically entails Q if and only if every model of (...) P is a model of Q. This idea is usually credited to Tarski, and before him Bolzano. But again we find Abū al-Barakāt already exploiting the idea for logical calculations. Abū al-Barakāt’s work follows on from related but inchoate research of Ibn Sīnā in eleventh century Persia. We briefly trace the notion of model-theoretical consequence back through Paul the Persian and in some form back to Aristotle himself. (shrink)

Ibn Sīnā proposed an analysis of arguments by reductio ad absurdum. His analysis contains, perhaps for the first time, a workable method for handling the making and discharging of assumptions in a formal proof. We translate the relevant text of Ibn Sīnā and put his analysis into the context of his general approach to logic.

In a recent paper Johan van Benthem reviews earlier work done by himself and colleagues on ‘natural logic’. His paper makes a number of challenging comments on the relationships between traditional logic, modern logic and natural logic. I respond to his challenge, by drawing what I think are the most significant lines dividing traditional logic from modern. The leading difference is in the way logic is expected to be used for checking arguments. For traditionals the checking is local, i.e. separately (...) for each inference step. Between inference steps, several kinds of paraphrasing are allowed. Today we formalise globally: we choose a symbolisation that works for the entire argument, and thus we eliminate intuitive steps and changes of viewpoint during the argument. Frege and Peano recast the logical rules so as to make this possible. I comment also on the traditional assumption that logical processing takes place at the top syntactic level, and I question Johan’s view that natural logic is ‘natural’. (shrink)

This chapter surveys set theory, model theory, and computability theory: how they first emerged from the foundations of mathematics, and how they have developed since. There are any amounts of mathematical technicalities in the background, but the chapter highlights those themes that have some philosophical resonance.

The idea that ethics can be derived from a common morality, while controversial, has become very influential in biomedical ethics. Although the concept is employed by several theories, it has most prominently been given a central role in principlism, an ethical theory endorsed by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in Principles of Biomedical Ethics (2009).1 This text has become a cornerstone of medical ethics education, an achievement that has been commended by critics and supporters alike. It articulates a system of (...) ethical decision making that is firmly rooted in claims about the common morality. Beauchamp and Childress’s theory of common morality has been both defended and criticized in the bioethics .. (shrink)

The moral right to privacy consists of the power to determine who may gain access to information about oneself. Individual human beings need some measure of privacy in order to develop a sense of self and to avoid manipulation by the state. Journalists who respect the privacy rights of those on whom they report should especially be careful not to intrude unduly when gathering information, in publishing they should be able to demonstrate a public need to know private information. Individual (...) journalists should establish their own guidelines for reporting on the private lives of different categories of people in the news. (shrink)

Food Sovereignty is a vibrant discourse in academic and activist circles, yet despite the many shared characteristics between issues surrounding food and public health, the two are often analysed in separate frameworks and the insights from Food Sovereignty are not sufficiently brought to bear on the problems in the public health discourse. In this paper, I will introduce the concept of 'self-organised community viability' as a way to link food and health, and to argue that what I call the 'Health (...) Security' paradigm requires a 'Health Sovereignty' response modelled on Food Sovereignty. (shrink)

One serious harm facing communities in the Anthropocene is epistemic loss. This is increasingly recognized as a harm in international policy discourses around adaptation to climate change. Epistemic loss is typically conceived of as the loss of a corpus of knowledge, or less commonly, as the further loss of epistemic methodologies. In what follows, I argue that epistemic loss also can involve the loss of epistemic self-determination, and that this framework can help to usefully examine adaptation policies.

This paper concerns the attempt to formulate an empirical version of the problem of evil, and the attempt to counter this version by what is known as ‘sceptical theism’. My concern is to assess what is actually achieved in these attempts. To this end I consider the debate between them against the backdrop of William Rowe's distinction between expanded standard theism and restricted standard theism (which I label E and R respectively). My claim is that the empirical version significantly fails (...) to challenge E in the way that a workable logical version would; and that sceptical theism significantly fails to defend R in the way that a workable theodicy would. My conclusion is that sceptical theism and the empirical argument play a significantly more limited role in the debate over evil than the arguments they are supposed to replace. (Published Online August 11 2004). (shrink)

Tarski's model-theoretic truth definition of the 1950s differs from his 1930s truth definition by allowing the language to have a set of parameters that are interpreted by means of structures. The paper traces how the model-theoretic theorems that Tarski and others were proving in the period between these two truth definitions became increasingly difficult to fit into the framework of the earlier truth definition, making the later one more or less inevitable. The paper also maintains that neither recursiveness nor satisfaction (...) are essential features of the truth definition . The recursive form was a ‘practical’ step towards the explicit definition that was Tarski's target. There are model-theoretic languages for which satisfaction is provably too crude a notion for expressing those properties of formulas that are needed for determining the truth of sentences. (shrink)

The current revival of communitarian thinking, alongside public journalism as its journalistic counterpart, is one response to thefractures that characterize modern society. I identifyfive symptoms/causes ofthefractured world. I then show, briefly, some contrasts between the communitarian ideal and that of liberal democracy. The conclusion calls for journalists to undertake the task of reworking our basic conceptual framework in ways that avoid the twin extreme, and naive anthropologies of individualism and collectivism in favor o f a communitarian view based upon acknowledgment (...) of human interdependence. (shrink)

Hodges explores Santayana’s doctrine of matter. Interpreting the realm of matter as the irrational, ineffable counterpart to the realm of essence, he elucidates the function and profound moral significance of materialism in Santayana’s system of philosophy.

As a result of the stress of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers have been expressing a great deal of frustration and anger, sometimes directed at patients who have chosen not to get vaccinated. This paper examines the moral status of such anger in light of philosophical treatments of anger's purpose, benefits, and drawbacks. A theory of appropriate anger is sketched, after which healthcare workers’ anger toward perceived patient wrongdoing is assessed in light of philosophical (...) considerations for and against anger. Ultimately, it is argued that it would be better for nurses and doctors not to experience this kind of anger, and this conclusion is used to motivate a moral case for additional support for overtaxed healthcare workers. (shrink)

Accountability is viewed as a civilizing element in society, with professional accountability formalized in most cases as duties dating to the Greeks and Socrates; journalists must find their own way, without formal professional or government regulation or licensing. Three scholars look at the process in a line from the formal professional discipline to suggesting problems the journalism fraternity faces without regulation to suggesting serious internal ethics conferences as 1 solution to the problem.

The purpose of this study is to see how Jon Stewart and his Daily Show colleagues hold traditional broadcast media accountable. This paper suggests Stewart is holding those who claim they are practicing journalism accountable to the public they claim to serve and outlines the normative implications of that accountability. There is a journalistic norm that media practitioners, and the media as a whole, should be accountable to the public. Here, accountability “refers to the process by which media are called (...) to account for meeting their obligations” (McQuail, 1997, p. 515). However, the government cannot enforce this accountability due to privileges afforded to the press by the First Amendment. Further, while national press councils have been effective in other countries, specifically India, there is no national press council in the United States. Enforcing accountability, then, falls to journalists—along with press critics. The researchers suggest that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart holds traditional broadcast media accountable in four distinct ways. (shrink)

Research on mental health and illness presents a variety of unique ethical challenges. This article argues that institutional review boards (IRBs) can improve their reviews of such research by including the perspectives of individuals with the condition under study either as members of the IRB or as consultants thereto. Several reasons for including the perspectives of these individuals are advanced, with the discussion organized around a hypothetical case study involving the assessment of a novel talk-therapy modality. Having made this case, (...) the article goes on to explain how to implement the idea by building on a recent proposal by Rebecca Dresser, who argues in a number of publications for the inclusion of former research participants in the IRB review process. Finally, concerns about protecting reviewer and consultant confidentiality are addressed. (shrink)