Preview Response

Justice / Medicine

John R. Peteet

Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

If being just in the first order is a virtue, it would seem relevant in mental health care – as a treatment  goal for some individuals, perhaps as an ingredient in the process of therapy, and as a characteristic of a good therapist.

Welcoming input from those to whom one is rightly accountable seems (a) to involve an assessment of the just basis of the relationship, and (b) to be an expression of justice, i.e. of giving what is due.