Impact of destruction of classic moral principles on ethical questions in psychiatry.

Society's treatment of psychiatric patients was always a reflection of social development and social awareness, as well as of ethical principles dominating a certain time period in that society. Over the last two and a half millennia, during which principles of Hippocratic ethics applied, attitudes towards psychiatric patients, from an ethical and practical standpoint, were and still are controversial to say the least. During this period thousands of people with mental disorders were abused, tortured, or killed, all of this in accordance to the existing ethical and legislative norms (Malleus Maleficarum, eugenic laws of totalitarian regimes...). In the last forty years many international organizations and associations brought forth a number of resolutions and declarations warning of the position and of the rights of psychiatric patients and giving instructions on the humane, that is to say ethical, treatment of this category of patients. In almost all the western countries laws are passed to protect the rights of people with mental disorders. Thanks to this and maybe even more to the development of psychiatry as a medical and scientific profession, the position of those with mental disorders is improving. However, at the same time over the last 40 years we are witnesses to the destruction of the classic moral principles and the establishment of certain "new" ethics which put psychiatric patients at a disadvantage, only in a more subtle way then before. This is why it is important to reexamine many of the ethical questions in psychiatry in the context of present ethical controversy.