Normality and mental health: The ethical dimension

Abstract

This article applies the concept of normality, in both its descriptive and normative connotations, to the field of mental health, emphasizing its ethical undertones in different cultural and situational contexts. Ethics is defined as the linguistic justification of morals, and bioethics is characterized by arguments based on dialogical, discursive, and deliberative processes. Bioethical decision-making influences human relationships and has implications for diagnosis, prognosis, interventions, and evaluation of therapeutic results and outcomes. Normality in mental health should be reformulated on bioethical principles to avoid being a source of stigma and discrimination, at a time when human diversity and cultural change impose a redefinition of conceptual boundaries and depathologization of different forms of behavior and experience.