Pourquoi un espace de réflexion éthique en santé mentale dans le Nord Pas-de-Calais ?

Early in 2010, The Regional Mental Health Research Federation (F2RSM) established a unit for consideration of ethical problems in mental health. We propose to identify a certain number of areas in which ethical factors are important. Based on this framework, we shall identify other issues. Initially, it seems essential to clarify those features, which are specially relevant in mental health and psychiatry, so as to formulate the pertinent ethical questions. However, the connections with other fields of medicine should not be lost and we should guard against engaging in deliberation in isolation from the human sciences. Above all, we feel that the use of the term “mental health” rather than “psychiatry” should be used to characterise this unit set up for consideration of ethical problems. In this way, it can help in emphasising certain ethical issues that are relevant in the context of the delivery of care and can open up new prospects in research.