Covert medication – ever ethically justifiable?

Abstract

‘The practice of psychiatry is more vulnerable to criticism than any other area of medicine’ (Mason & McCall Smith, 1999). The interventionist philosophy of psychiatry and the legacy of the psychiatric practices of the past century have left an imprint on society's mind of coercive treatments against a background of unscientific evidence of benefit. Other medical specialities conversely are forgiven their history of barbarism (has anyone been to a medical museum lately?) on the grounds that they were using the only tools available to them at the time. Public attitudes, including stigma and suspicion, make it more difficult for us to claim a similar defence, and modern day psychiatrists appear to bear the indelible scars of our predecessors' actions.