Article
Weaving Beauty Into the Tapestry of the Pandemic
Author(s):
The cure should not be worse than the disease; so must we be cautious about our response to COVID-19. More in this video with Harold J. Bursztajn, MD.
Companion piece(s):
Neither Deaths From Denial Nor Deaths From Despair
Prevention of Covert COVID Iatrogenesis
Weaving Beauty Into the Tapestry of the Pandemic
We want to be sure that just as when we treat psychiatric illness with medications or psychotherapy, there are no unintended consequences. The cure should not be worse than the disease; so must we be cautious about an exaggerated response to COVID-19. To my mind, that is iatrogenesis.
More in this video with Harold J. Bursztajn, MD, Co-founder of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at Harvard Medical School and President of the American Unit of the UNESCO Bioethics Chair (Haifa). He is coauthor of Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty (1981/1990). He practices clinical and forensic psychiatry and risk management in Cambridge, MA.
