The public, mental health consumers, as well as mental health practitioners wonder about what kinds of values mental health professionals hold, and what kinds of values influence psychiatric diagnosis. Are mental disorders socio-political, practical, or scientific concepts? Is psychiatric diagnosis value-neutral? What role does the fundamental philosophical question "How should I live?" play in mental health care? In his carefully nuanced and exhaustively referenced monograph, psychiatrist and philosopher of psychiatry John Z. Sadler describes the manifold kinds of values and value judgements involved in psychiatric diagnosis and classification systems like the DSM. Professor Sadler takes the reader on a fascinating conceptual tour of the inner workings of psychiatric diagnosis, considering the role of science, culture, sexuality, politics, gender, technology, human nature, patienthood, and professions in building his vision of a more humane psychiatric diagnostic process.

Nature and Narrative is the launch volume in a new series of books entitled International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry. The series will aim to build links between the sciences and humanities in psychiatry.

Our ability to decipher mental disorders depends to a unique extent on both the sciences and the humanities. Science provides insight into the 'causes' of a problem, enabling us to formulate an 'explanation', and the humanities provide insight into its 'meanings' and helps with our 'understanding'. Psychiatry, if it is to develop as a balanced discipline, must draw on input from both of these spheres.

Nature (for causes) and Narrative (for meanings) will help define the series as a whole by touching on a range of issues relevant to this 'border country'. With contributions from an international star-studded cast, representing the field of psychiatry, psychology and philosophy, this volume will set the scene for this new interdisciplinary field.

This will be of interest to all those with practical experience of mental health issues, whether as providers or as users/consumers of services, as well as to philosophers, social scientists, and bioethicists.

Psychiatrists have written much about the explosive expansion of scientific knowledge of the brain which developed over the late 20th century and the early 21st century. Comparatively little has been written within the field of psychiatry about the changes in society and world culture over this same period, and even less on the scope of psychiatric ethics that would account for these changes. Yet psychiatric ethics is an excellent framework in which to examine social changes in the field over the past 25 years, changes which are dramatic in nature and profound in impact. Some of these social changes include multiculturalism and its associated diversity of values; the transition to the digital era with its new demands on confidentiality, clinical boundaries, and privacy; the empowerment of psychiatric service users as full participants and co-producers of care; the development of new technologies of assessment and treatment, varying in their invasiveness and risk; the recognition of expanded social roles for psychiatrists, and the associated virtues of psychiatric citizenship; and the development of new practice models, settings, participants, and oversight, all of which represent profound challenges and opportunities for the ethical practice of psychiatry. The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatric Ethics is the most comprehensive treatment of the field in history. The volume is organized into ten sections which survey the scope of the text: (1) Introduction, (2) People Come First, (3) Specific Populations, (4) Philosophy and Psychiatric Ethics, (5) Religious Contexts of Psychiatric Ethics, (6) Social Contexts of Psychiatric Ethics, (7) Ethics in Psychiatric Citizenship and the Law, (8) Ethics of Psychiatric Research, (9) Ethics and Values in Psychiatric Assessment and Diagnosis, (10) Ethics and Values in Psychiatric Treatment. Written and edited by an international team of experts, this landmark book provides a powerful and important review of psychiatric ethics in the 21st Century.