Mirjam Faissner

Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin | Charité · Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine

Mental healthcare research increasingly focuses the needs of trans people and, in doing so, acknowledges knowledge and epistemic resources developed in trans communities. In this article, we aim to raise awareness of an ethical issue described by Emmalon Davis that may arise in the context of engaging with community knowledge and epistemic resource...

Background: Stigma has a significant impact on the health of different societal groups and contributes to inequalities in healthcare. Sex work is associated with significant social stigma, which has detrimental effects on sex workers' access to healthcare. This exploratory study gives first insights into the perspectives of sex workers and counselo...

Bioethics increasingly recognizes the impact of discriminatory practices based on social categories such as race, gender, sexual orientation or ability on clinical practice. Accordingly, major bioethics associations have stressed that identifying and countering structural discrimination in clinical ethics consultations is a professional obligation...

Smartphone apps might offer a low-threshold approach to the detection of mental health conditions, such as depression. Based on the gathering of ‘passive data,’ some apps generate a user’s ‘digital phenotype,’ compare it to those of users with clinically confirmed depression and issue a warning if a depressive episode is likely. These apps can, thu...

In October 2022, the International Association of Bioethics announced that the 17th World Congress of Bioethics (WCB) 2024 would be held in Doha, Qatar. The International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB) traditionally holds its World Congress jointly with the WCB. As part of the ongoing debate about the ethics of bioethics conferen...

In mental health ethics, it is generally assumed that coercive measures are sometimes justified when persons with mental illness endanger themselves or others. Coercive measures are regarded as ethically justified only when certain criteria are fulfilled: for example, the intervention must be proportional in relation to the potential harm. In this...

Background Self-binding directives (SBDs) are psychiatric advance directives that include a clause in which mental health service users consent in advance to involuntary hospital admission and treatment under specified conditions. Medical ethicists and legal scholars identified various potential benefits of SBDs but have also raised ethical concern...

Background Mental healthcare users and patients were described as a particularly vulnerable group in the debate on the burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just what this means and what normative conclusions can be derived from it depend to a large extent on the underlying concept of vulnerability. While a traditional understanding locates vulnerabili...

Im internationalen Diskurs sind feministische Perspektiven auf die Medizinethik bereits etabliert. Demgegenüber scheinen diese bislang nur vereinzelt in den deutschsprachigen medizinethischen Diskurs eingebracht zu werden. In diesem Artikel untersuchen wir, welche feministischen Perspektiven im deutschsprachigen medizinethischen Diskurs vertreten s...

Zusammenfassung Die Abwehr von Gefahren für Dritte als Aufgabe der Psychiatrie wird kontrovers diskutiert und immer wieder grundsätzlich infrage gestellt. Ethisch sind Zwangsmaßnahmen oder Zwangsbehandlungen im Kontext von Fremdgefährdung in jedem Fall begründungsbedürftig. In diesem Beitrag wird zunächst dargestellt, wie sich Maßnahmen gegen den W...

Zusammenfassung Menschen mit psychischer Erkrankung sterben statistisch gesehen früher als die Allgemeinbevölkerung. Ein Grund hierfür ist, dass sie eine schlechtere somatische Gesundheitsversorgung erhalten. Wir argumentieren, dass ableistische Netzwerke sozialer Bedeutung zu einer Abwertung der epistemischen Kompetenz von Menschen mit psychischer...

Maladaptive cognitive beliefs as measured by the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS) increase vulnerability to depression. Maladaptive metacognitive beliefs as measured by the Metacognitive Questionnaire‐30 (MCQ‐30) are also thought to contribute to depression. However, the long‐term stability of metacognitive beliefs in depression has not yet been...

Objectives The availability of treatment for depression needs to be improved. Among the barriers are the dearth of group programmes and the high demand of many programmes with regard to staff expertise. The Metacognitive Training for Depression (D‐MCT) is a new, easy‐to‐administer, cognitive behaviour‐based group intervention. In a previous 6‐month...