ABSTRACT
Anatomical interest in exhibiting psychiatric remains raises a number of challenging ethical issues. These centre on the extent to which ‘informed consent’ has, or has not, played a role in obtaining the bodies of the recently deceased for medical purposes. Such issues also focus attention on the degree to which the bodies and brains of the mentally ill have, or have not, been used to shed light on mental diseases and therefore mental illness. This chapter outlines and evaluates three models of practice in this fi eld. In the fi rst, the bodies of the mentally ill have been used without consent, but purportedly for useful ends. In the second, bodies have been obtained unethically without consent to allegedly achieve useful outcomes, including the alleviation of mental illness. In the third, the bodies of the mentally ill have been obtained with consent for specifi c research projects aimed at increasing our medical and social understanding of neurodegenerative conditions.
