Everyday Ethics - Review Reminiscent of Sue Estroff , Making it Crazy, Paul Brodwin , Everyday Ethics, sheds light on the

disconnected system of mental health, looking into the literal interface between clinicians and disenfranchised individuals suffering from mental illness. Unlike Estroff work, Brodwin focuses on the perspective of clinicians rather than the clients to illuminate the problems providers face with the broken system. He weaves stories of people following the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model with commentary on the ethical and moral dilemmas the frontline practitioners face when treating them. Brodwin expands on the themes of bioethics, structural power, and stability throughout the chapters of the book, concluding with ideas of control, coercion, and confidentiality ll problems encountered by the staff at Eastside Services. The definitions of what is moral and ethical are not rigid parameters by which the frontline workers abide, for their main goal is to build relationships with the clients. Brodwin explains the zone of desire and reality: what the clinician wants versus what they can actually do. The low-level professionals, those who cannot prescribe, are the most connected to the clients, having to be with and understand wholly the lives and conditions of the clients. Efforts of the case workers go without outcome because of the lack of resources available to those with mental illness once they are on their own. Brodwin is successful in conveying the issues of what should be done and what can be done. Putting the emphasis on the worker who cannot influence the client because he or she does not wield the power to prescribe is a notable way to explain the issue. An interesting point Brodwin makes is that the audience of books and scholarly journal articles about bioethics does not include these frontline clinicians. Because they do not receive formal training, most, if not all, training is experience-based. These clinicians practice by adaption. Everyday Ethics is revolutionary and timely, educating readers on where the focus should be now. Historically, ethnographers in the psychiatric sphere maintained emphasis on the patient with respect to social context, personal trauma, etc. However, Brodwin is now urging for a shift through exemplifying the struggles many low-level practitioners face. Assessing the problem at this level is beneficial in figuring out how to avoid the eventual social abandonment these clients experience. Further, as Brodwin illustrates the issue of confinement and coercion, Joao Biehl Vita comes to mind. The chief interlocutor of Biehl account, Catarina, is

imposed to medical coercion, being forced to take unnecessary medication that are perhaps harmful. Similarly, Brodwin explains the problem of forced hospitalization going as far as employing the police to take away patients for a 72 hour period of confinement. These precise, systematic issues lay at the root of social abandonment and give cause to the over-medicalization of psychological aberrations.