ETHICS IN FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY - A CULTURAL RESPONSE TO STONE AND APPELBAUM

Dr, Alan Stone has argued that forensic psychiatrists lack clear guide lines about what is proper and ethical with respect to their professio nal activity and consequently, that they ought to stay out of the cour troom, Dr, Paul Appelbaum and others have responded to Stone's critiqu e with proposals that provide a countervailing framework of ethical gu idance for forensic psychiatrists. It is this author's contention that both sides in the debate have ignored the issues that are important t o forensic psychiatrists who belong to culturally nondominant groups i n the United States, As a result, African-American forensic psychiatri sts are likely to be troubled by an ethics framework that ignores thei r special struggles linked to the matter of race. By gutting the debat e of any reference to a cultural context, the participants have enunci ated a culture-free theory of ethics that is an ineffective tool for t he black professional. The author argues for a reworking of the theore tical reasoning behind the debate that would ultimately render the deb ate more relevant to the professional life of African-American forensi c psychiatrists and those from other nondominant groups.