Moral responsibility, consciousness and psychiatry

Abstract:

This article discusses the connection between consciousness and responsibility. Moral responsibility plays a crucial, but often implicit role in psychiatry in that it is often a therapeutic aim as well as an important evaluative concept. This article explains one of the more influential ‘psychological’ theories of moral responsibility, developed by Harry Frankfurt. In the second part of this article, a modified version of this account is applied to a range of psychiatric phenomena.

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2005; 39:1018–1021

Keywords: consciousness; ethics; moral responsibility; psychiatry

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/j.1440-1614.2005.01720.x