Overview of psychiatric ethics II: Virtue ethics and the ethics of care

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this paper is to consider the components of two moral theories--the ethics of virtue and the ethics of care--and their relationship to psychiatry.

Conclusions: Although both theories reflect fundamentally desirable human qualities, neither provides a comprehensive account of psychiatric ethics. We are therefore drawn to a similar conclusion as those of Hare (1993) and Bloch and Green (2006), in that these theories offer a complementary approach to other ethical theories in psychiatry.