Bioethics in psychiatry is a research area that is gaining more relevance each year. To understand what bioethics is we need to clarify some concepts.

Morals are the rules that govern the behaviour of humans being in relation to society and themselves but that does not imply alone the concept of good or bad.

Ethics consider what is moral, how to rationally justify a moral system and how it is applied then to different areas of our social life. We therefore conclude that bioethics is responsible for studying what is moral in the field of human behavior.

We provide a historical review of bioethics in psychiatry from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Having reviewed documents we will cover the key historical events which changed the course of bioethics in psychiatry as well as in other areas of medicine.

In our field, Psychiatry, Bioethics is a relatively new discipline which has changed over the centuries to find a model based on patient autonomy and beneficence. These two basic ethical principles were specially established since the Belmont Report was published in the 70s.

Despite the changes and evolution through the history, bioethics is a subject that still requires more research and analysis. There are still few professionals who have an adequate training in bioethics.