[The ethical challenge in psychiatry]

The historical reasons for the importance of ethical issues in medicine are revisited. An analysis of doctor-patient relationships in psychiatry allow us to conclude that the demand of an ethical reflection in this specialty is even more imperative. Specific ethical considerations are made about some customary activities of psychiatrists such as diagnosing, pharmacological prescription and psychotherapy. 1.-

the facts that psychiatric diagnoses are based in conventions, are undemonstratable and that the patient's familial and work life depend on them, forces a careful management. 2.-Pharmacotherapy: due to the high proportion of secondary effects of pharmacological agents used in psychiatry -some of them irreversible- and the sort of human spirit manipulation that their use implicates, their indication must be painstaking. 3.- Psychotherapy: its legitimacy is the fundamental question, since the influence that a psychotherapist may get to have over his patients could be enormous. Aiming to find the real place of "healing by the word" in medicine, some Platonic texts are surveyed.