[Human dignity as foundation of an ethics in psychiatry]

Psychiatry is distinguished from other fields of medical expertise and bears a particular kind of responsibility, namely the treatment of persons incapable of informed consent per se. The History of psychiatry shows that much too often inhuman abuse was happening in psychiatric facilities. An ethics of psychiatry therefore requires a reliable and stable foundation for values that allow justifying normative claims embracing both characteristics. Such a basic foundation already exists in form of the pluralistic and international recognition of human dignity. We argue that human dignity does and has to go beyond "respect for autonomy" and by that it can function as highest authority on questions concerning value judgments on critical cases in psychiatric bioethics.