Medical Deontology in Psychiatry During the Early Communist Period in Romania

Abstract

Immediately after the World War Two, Romanian medical deontology in general and Psychiatry deontology in particular suffered a process of dissolution, causing a minimization of the role of the patient and a maximization of the role of the collectivity. This moral dissolution favoured acts of psychiatric abuse, most of them still unknown, against political dissidents, psychiatric patients, or even regular people considered reactionary by the political regime. The basis of medical ethics/deontology was no longer the relation between physician and patient, but between physician and patient as the member of the collectivity. The basis of the medical ethics “must be beforehand the science of the physicians from a social and political point of view. This approach changed numerous paradigms that were present in medical deontology for more than half of century in Romania. The purpose of this presentation is to succinctly present the most important elements of communist medical ethics with applicability in psychiatry, structured on the three main pillars of medical deontology: the relation of the physician with his colleagues, the patient, and society. Acknowledgment This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNDI– UEFISCDI, PN-II-RU-TE-2012-3-44