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Strengthening autonomy in mental health care through a relational approach

Nature Mental Health volume 2, pages 1271–1272 (2024)Cite this article

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Respect for autonomy is foundational to all types of clinical care, and receiving mental health care places people in a vulnerable situation that has a direct impact on their ability to live as they choose, making concerns about autonomy central. The classical understanding of personal autonomy, which still influences medical guidelines, is based on an individualistic framework and is inadequate for ethical mental health care. The goal of this Comment is to articulate why the relational autonomy model, developed in feminist bioethics, is a necessary approach for the mental health field.

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Fig. 1: The relational approach to mental health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bioethics Program, FLACSO Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Paola Buedo & Timothy Daly

  2. Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine, Department of Preclinical Medicine, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Paola Buedo

  3. CNRS UMR 1219 (Bordeaux Population Health) & UMR 5164 (ImmunoConcept), University of Bordeaux & INSERM, Bordeaux, France

    Timothy Daly

Authors
  1. Paola Buedo
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  2. Timothy Daly
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Correspondence to Paola Buedo or Timothy Daly.

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Nature Mental Health thanks the anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Buedo, P., Daly, T. Strengthening autonomy in mental health care through a relational approach. Nat. Mental Health 2, 1271–1272 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00337-8

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