title: [When the patient asks for counselling, when the patient doesn't ask for counselling, when the patient refuses therapy].
abstract: A large debate that has brought some depths changes is in action. It is on the relationship between patients and health professionals, physicians, nurses, psychologists etc. The path went through the medical paternalism to the phase of the autonomy, thin to reach the ethics of taking care. In these years, bioethics has tried to answer to urgent questions that primarily interest the private sphere of the people. Currently, by contributions of European and American philosophies, an ethics of the responsibility is delineating This, differentiates the ethics of the rights and the rules (autonomy, self-determination). The attitude of taking care postpones to a whole intellectual, affective, moral competences, that every health professional has to possess to establish relationship with people. This allows, beyond the autonomy, a fundamental moral principle that remains, to give a positive emotional answer and support the conditions and the situation of others. In this answer, the availability to be in the identification process is affirmed to, with their problems and, the desire to do the possible to assuage their suffering. If the person is set in a large net of relationships, is able to express autonomy mediating counselling process of health professionals. The client will freely choose to assume self-care responsibilities.
authors.affiliation: Azienda Ospedaliera S. Cammillo, Forlanini, Rome.
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mitello
mesh_terms: D003376:Counseling; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D016743:Mental Competency; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D016312:Treatment Refusal