Bioethics, Sociality, and Mental Illness

Abstract

Abstract The phenomenology of bioethics is approached here in relation to the lived experience as it relates to the everyday lifeworld of persons suffering from mental illness. Taking a road less traveled, the purpose here is to elucidate ethical issues relating to sociality, using findings from qualitative phenomenological psychological research. Qualitative studies of schizophrenia and postpartum depression serve as examples. Layered throughout is the applied phenomenological argument pointing to the importance of returning to mundane intersubjectivity and the reversibility between mental illness, the existential context of suffering, and sociality.