ABSTRACT
What better way to start a chapter that explores ethical consideration toward people with a
mental illness than by a quote from Hildegard Peplau. Peplau became a mental health nurse
because she saw so many people on the street with an obvious mental illness and no-one to
care for them. In her book she later comments that staff working with the mentally ill can
reinforce patients’ self-disempowering beliefs by disregarding their opinion and not engag-
ing with them in a therapeutic relationship.
