Michael Laney

Peteet, witvliet, and Evans have done a great service in bringing to our attention the importance of accountability in all aspects of psychiatric care, in assessments of accountability in our patients’ lives—its role in treatment planning and engagement, and identifying it as a goal of treatment itself. In their paper, the authors distinguish the virtue of accountability from merely being accountable to another person by emphasizing one’s embrace of being accountable to others as a motivated disposition that furthers human flourishing. They identify it as a sub-virtue of justice, defined as giving to others what is their due, and delineate two fundamental aspects of accountability that are in keeping with...