[Ethical aspects of forensic psychiatry and psychology]

Psychiatry is a discipline which poses particularly sophisticated and subtile requirements from the point of view of professional ethics, as well as general morality, especially when a psychiatrists is a forensic court expert. The necessity of freeing oneself from the temptation to succum to one's distance, and preserve a suitable professional perspectives, with a simultaneous understanding of another human being, often forces the forensic expert to face the toughest and doctor. One also has to bear in mind the specific triple responsibility of the forensic psychiatrists: before the examined person, the confidence in him and whose interests also need to be respected and protected. Another deontological problem is the issue of keeping professional secrets which should belong to the duties of every psychiatrists and psychologists, and particularly that of a forensic expert. The issue of professional secrets in medicine is discussed in the Code of Medical Ethics (1993) and in Act on the Protection of Mental Health (1995). Finally, the deontological problems of forensic psychiatry and psychology can be analyzed at the most general level, when for instance, totalitarian states abuse institutions whose aim is to bring assistance to people with mental disturbances, for political purposes. Such accusation were never made with relation to Poland.