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Responsibility to carers — an ethical dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Jacqueline M. Atkinson  and
Denise A. Coia
Jacqueline M. Atkinson
Affiliation:
Department of Community Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RZ
Denise A. Coia
Affiliation:
Florence Street Day Hospital, Glasgow G5
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The responsibility the health service owes to relatives who care for mentally ill patients is gradually being acknowledged. The Griffiths Report (1988) makes explicit both that families should care for their ill members and that the health service has a duty to provide some support. The new support for the family is more to enable them to be ‘better carers’ and to cope with the burdens of caring. One area of psychiatry where this support is a growth area is for relatives of people with schizophrenia. Research points to both the impact of some families on the career of the patient, including relapse rates, and the ways in which such negative impact can be reduced (Leff et al, 1989). This paper is concerned with the ethical issues involved in offering a service to relatives. The ethical dilemma of access to relatives is intimately related to the person at whom outcome is aimed.

Type
Articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 13 , Issue 11 , November 1989 , pp. 602 - 604
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989

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