ScattergoodEthics – Engagement & Media

Engage & Collaborate.

ScattergoodEthics Confabs

Modeled loosly on the Jeffersonian Dinner model, ScattergoodEthics Confabs provide an opportunity for interdsciplinary dialogue, debate, and collaboration. The goal of each Confab is to crystalize a set of important ideas around a specific question in behavioral health care ethics. Participants are diverse and include senior clinicians and trainees, consumers, academicians, philathropists, and advocates.

Confab Topic #1: Should mental health service users be referred to as consumers, patients, survivors, or citizens?| Read Perspectives

Confab Topic #2: Is it ever ethical to withhold from your patient their mental health diagnosis? | Read Perspectives

Media Coverage

For media inquiries, please contact ScattergoodEthics' Communication Manager Meghan Ross at meghan.ross@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.

Philadelphia Inquirer | Pa doctor offering free mask-exemption letter to parents faces possible discipline | September 2021

Times Union | Commentary: With vaccine stance, Nurses Association sets poor example | August 2021

WOSU All Sides with Ann Fisher | Legal And Ethical Issues Surrounding COVID Vaccine Mandates | August 2021

US News & World Report | Half of U.S. Teens Plan to Get COVID Shot, But Can Numbers Go Higher? | July 2021

PUBS Podcast | Ethical Considerations in Mental Health Research and Care Delivery | April 2021

All Sides with Ann Fisher | Moral And Ethical Complexities Of COVID-19 | March 2021

The Daily Pennsylvanian | Penn Med experts question Trump's COVID-19 treatment plan and his downplaying of virus | October 2020

Penn Live | Recreational cannabis, racial justice, and an ethical way forward for Pennsylvania | September 2020

New York Post | Kanye West needs help, but mental-health laws make it tough to intervene | July 2020

Psychology Today | When Autism Advocacy Is "Partial" | June 2020

WHYY The Pulse | Social Media’s ‘Infodemic’ | June 2020

WOSU Radio | Pandemic Ethics | June 2020

WHYY | Protests, masks and public health: where do my rights end and yours begin? | May 2020

The Philadelphia Inquirer | Should coronavirus lockdown protesters waive their medical care? Some medical ethicists think so. | May 2020

The New York Times | What’s Going to Happen to Junior, Now That His Mother Is Dead? | May 2020

All Inclusive | How Do Healthcare Providers Treat Patients Equally During the COVID-19 Pandemic? | April 2020

Social Work Helper | New White Paper Provides Triage Blueprint for COVID-19 Pandemic to Protect People with Disabilities | April 2020

The Appeal | In Alabama, Prisoners Must Sign Consent Form to Get Protective Masks | April 2020

WHYY | Finding Help for Schizophrenia in a ‘Broken’ System | April 2020

Medscape | Suicidal Patients Often Excluded From Antidepressant Trials | February 2020

The Atlantic | Your Chemical Romance | January 2020

WHYY | Missing and Mentally Ill: How Much Does the Public Need to Know? | January 2020

Philadelphia Magazine | In “Assault on Privacy,” Philly Police Routinely Reveal Mental Health Status of Missing City Residents | December 2019

Psymposia | As Legal Psychedelic Therapy Emerges, Ethicists Urge for More Comprehensive Frameworks to Address Sexual Abuse | November 2019

City Journal | Treatment with Dignity | November 2019

WHYY | The Myth of Mental Illness and Gun Violence | August 2019

The Wall Street Journal | After Trump Blames Mental Illness for Mass Shootings, Health Agencies Ordered to Hold All Posts on Issue | August 2019

Here & Now | The State Of America's Psychiatric Hospitals | November 2017

The Washington Post | "He’s in prison for life for a violent carjacking. His mother says he belongs in a mental hospital." | September 2017

The Atlantic | Who Decides Where Autistic Adults Live? | May 2015

VICE | The Life, Death, and Possible Resurrection of the Asylum | April 2015

The New York Times | The Modern Asylum | February 2015

Nature | Rave drug holds promise for treating depression fast | January 2015

Consultation Services

Increasingly complex and ethically fraught healthcare delivery systems demand that providers maintain a sharp focus on their healing mission and ensure the best interests of their patients, clients, and employees are served. To meet these demands, faculty from the Center for Bioethics and the ScattergoodEthics Program provide ethics education, consultation and training services to behavioral healthcare agencies large and small.

Ethicists from the ScattergoodEthics program are availble to support your organization's ethics committee or ethics officer by reviewing cases, providing resources, and offering recommendations on a case-by-case basis.

For more information on our range of consultation services, please contact us.

Ethics Policy Development

The development and effective implentation of ethics policies can help to cultivate and support an organizational culture based on accountability, core values and ethical awareness. We offer services designed to assess organizational needs and design ethics policies and procedures for topics including but not limited to: ethics committee make-up and consultation process, conflicts of interest, mental health research ethics, ethical-legal conflicts, matters of indiviudal conscience, client-provider boundaries, and client confidentiality.