Ethics in Contemporary Community Psychiatry

This article builds on the existing values and ethical foundations of medical ethics and develops them such that they are applicable to community psychiatry. The authors address ethical foundations that apply to clinical settings and administrative and advocacy roles. This article has two central goals: (1) to provide community psychiatrists a framework in which to approach a novel ethical situation and (2) to provide general psychiatrists with a broadened understanding of applied ethics in the many novel situations encountered in contemporary community psychiatry practice.