Charter of Psychiatry

Charter established at the time of the Xth National Convention of Private Psychiatry, Sunday October 26th 1980.

An ancient and special branch of medicine, psychiatry, discipline of profesionals who operate in the specific field that is its own, is based as much on medical science as on the art that is proper to it.

Engaged in the social reality, psychiatry ethically must preserve at any price the individuality and the originality of people that confide in it or are entrusted to it.

Independent of ideologies, the art and psychiatry techniques take account of the person in his entirety, with his biological, psychological, relational and institutional aspects.

Thus psychiatry aims to reestablish the patient in his being and life.

For this purpose, a contract, tacit or explicit, is made, the objet of which can and only must be the interest of the patient, ouside of any extraneous constraint, public or private.

With respect to the Hippocratic law, the ethics of each practician assures to each patient : secrecy, information, assistance, and, if necessary, advice.

This principle does not admit any exception. This is to say that psychiatry refuses solemnly to submit to all exterior pressure threatening physical or mental integrity of the patient, whether the latter is aware of this or not.

It works to institute or restore for the patient a viable present and a possible future. It must allow the patient to find or refind freedom, autonomy, and responsability.

The professionals in psychiatry are committed jointly and severally to respect and to make these ethical rules be respected at all times and in all places.

 

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