Ethics and comprehensive diagnosis.

This paper briefly reviews basic concepts of ethics, including its meanings and dimensions and its relationship to culture. It then examines the ethical bases of medicine and psychiatry. Of particular relevance here is the connection between ethics as concern for totality and the fundamentals of health and healing. Next, the ethical bases and implications of clinical diagnosis are considered. Finally, the paper outlines the features of a comprehensive diagnostic model and explicates how ethics is linked to the integrative nature of comprehensive diagnosis and its therapeutic purpose.