The Virtuous Psychiatrist
Character Ethics in Psychiatric Practice
Jennifer Radden and John Sadler
Reviews and Awards
"This is a worthwhile and interesting book...The exploration of the problems unique to psychiatry versus other medical specialists is handled quite well. The chapter on gender issues is both thoughtful and insightful. This is a very useful and important contribution to the ethics of psychiatry."--Doody's
"...Jennifer Radden and John Sadler have written a great book that is especially recommended to all working in the healthcare system and in the psychiatric field in particular. Beside its inspiring potential for practitioners, the Virtuous Psychiatrist is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of psychiatry as a field that needs its own ethical standards. It not only inspires the debate on norms and values in other areas of the profession, but once more reveals the need for putting the issue of psychiatric practice right into the centre of deep philosophical reflection." --Metapsychology
"The authors are talented writers who can inspire virtue in its many manifestations...this is an ambitious and provocative text whose thesis deserves the consideration of our field." --American Journal Psychiatry
"(The author's) discussion of these complex issues is thoughtful and scholarly yet readable and accessible. The book is a timely antidote to an excessively technological psychiatry and one might hope that journal clubs could find some time for it in addition to the usual diet of evidence-based medicine." -- The British Journal of Psychiatry
"It is an exceptional volume that should have a place in the library of all reflective and morally serious mental health professionals. One of the book's many strengths is that it is a collaboration between a philosphy of psychiatric practice, ethics and policy, Jennifer Radden, and a philosophically oriented psychiatrist who has done extensive work at the intersection of values theory, psychiatric diagnostic classification and ethics, John Sadler. The product of their collaboration is a beautiful study of the place and power of virtue or character ethics, which emphasizes the virtues and ideals of moral excellence in psychiatric practice." -- Psychological Medicine
"The Virtuous Psychiatrist is an interesting read. It does an excellent job in advancing the existing conversation and debate about such topics as: the fundamentally interpersonal nature of psychiatric practice and training, the social-cultural construction of mental illnesses and their diagnoses, the benefits and burdens of the consumer and biomedical models of psychiatry, and the affective/emotional components of virtues." -- Jeffrey Kirby, MD, MA, Associate Professor & Ethics Consultant, Department of Bioethics; Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
"In sum, The Virtuous Psychiatrist is an excellent and thorough extension of a virtue ethics framework to the practice of mental healthcare. Radden and Sadler's work was both well-researched and well-practiced. As a result, this piece is an inspiring read for those in mental health care and provides multiple applications for those in bioethics, psychiatry, counseling, empirical moral psychology, philosophical practice, and disability studies." -- Philosophical Practice
