Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment in the Era of COVID-19: Systemic Social Oppression and Discourses of Risk in Public Health and Bioethics

This paper considers the continuation of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on the United States of America. Situating psychiatric diagnosis and hospitalization within the broader context of decades of social and historical research, as well as emergent fields such as feminist philosophy of disability, critical diversity studies (CDS), and mad studies, I argue that a socially mediated process which is legitimated with appeals to “health” and “safety” should not be maintained during a pandemic of a readily communicable virus that is especially dangerous for individuals clustered in inpatient settings. A CDS approach allows the clear identification of “severe mental illness” as a marked category of social difference which leads to multiple forms of social oppression. In this paper, I show how involuntary psychiatric hospitalization is a social process through which marked individuals are dehumanized and confined. Furthermore, I consider why the maintenance of the status quo, even under pandemic conditions, demonstrates that involuntary treatment is primarily a political, rather than a medical, process. Finally, I outline why the politics of involuntary treatment should concern longstanding disciplines such as public health and bioethics, as well as emergent disciplines like CDS

Ethical perspectives on advances in biogerontology

Worldwide populations are aging with economic development as a result of public health initiatives and advances in therapeutic discoveries. Since 1850, life expectancy has advanced by 1 year for every four. Accompanying this change is the rapid development of anti‐aging science. There are three schools of thought in the field of aging science. One perspective is the life course approach, which considers that aging is a good and natural process to be embraced as a necessary and positive aspect of life, where the aim is to improve the quality of existing lifespan and “compress” morbidity. Another view is that aging is undesirable, and that rejuvenation and indeed immortality are possible since the biological basis of aging is understood, and therefore, strategies are possible for engineering negligible senescence. Finally, a hybrid approach is that life span can be extended by anti‐aging medicines but with uncertain effects on health. While these advances offer much promise, the ethical perspectives are seldom discussed in cross‐disciplinary settings. This article discusses some of the key ethical issues arising from recent advances in biogerontology

What Does It Mean for a Case to be ‘Local’?: the Importance of Local Relevance and Resonance for Bioethics Education in the Asia-Pacific Region

Contemporary bioethics education has been developed predominately within Euro-American contexts, and now, other global regions are increasingly joining the field, leading to a richer global understanding. Nevertheless, many standard bioethics curriculum materials retain a narrow geographic focus. The purpose of this article is to use local cases from the Asia-Pacific region as examples for exploring questions such as ‘what makes a case or example truly local, and why?’, ‘what topics have we found to be best explained through local cases or examples?’, and ‘how does one identify a relevant local case?’ Furthermore, we consider the global application of local cases to help extend the possible scope of the discussion, opening new avenues for the development of practical bioethics educational materials. We begin with a background description and discussion of why local cases enhance bioethics education, move to an overview of what is currently available and what is not for the region, and then outline a discussion of what it means to be local using example cases drawn from Hong Kong, Australia, Pakistan, and Malaysia. We are not creating a casebook but rather constructing by example a toolbox for designing active and dynamic learning cases using regional diversity as contextualised cases with generalised principles