Challenges, Needs and Unmet Needs – an EPa Overview of European Codes of Ethics

Abstract

Since 3 years matters of ethics are in an increasing way on the agenda of the European Psychiatric Association. Intensive discussions in the associations ethical committee have scrutinized the problems and elucidated the range of ethical dilemmas. A questionnaire sent by the Committee to European Psychiatric Associations has given a panorama of the ethical problems in European Psychiatry and shown their diversity and even communalities. This overview has been presented at different meetings of the EPA and has recently been reviewed, updated and additionally commented by all committed European national associations. Hereby, new problems in European psychiatry have emerged or became intensified, e.g. the demand on psychiatry’s involvement in end of life issues as well consequences of the limitation of resources, specificities of financing routines in times of resource limitations and ways of prioritizations within medical care and mental health support implied by an all more predominant market economical system.

Other re-emerged problems are questions and problems in contact with private sectors of users organizations, care providers or pharmaceutical industries and the need and strategies for multisectorial involvement in psychiatric education and research support. Here, again a need of ethical guidelines in psychiatrists contact has become actualized, especially regarding the needs of young psychiatrists and is one of the focuses in this symposium.

In this contribution, these newly emerged ethical challenges will be elucidated, the positions of national psychiatric associations and their recently updated priorities regarding ethical challenges will be reviewed and the activities and structures of EPAs further activities on ethics will be presented for discussion.