Are Research Ethics Bad for Our Mental Health?

Patients with mental illness are much better off now than they were only a few decades ago. Diagnostic methods are more reliable, and treatments are more effective. Only a minority of psychiatric patients require long-term hospitalization, and the practice of psychiatry is now more like the practice of other medical specialties. At the same time, the prevalence of psychiatric disease is more clearly recognized. Five of the world's 10 leading causes of disability are psychiatric: depression, alcohol abuse, bipolar mood disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive–compulsive disorder.1 Each of these disorders has important genetic determinants and biologic correlates. In the past 40 . . .