Objective: To consider the role courage plays in our ability to cope with threat and adversity, especially the role of courage in understanding demoralization and dignity.
Method: By exploring standard psychiatric texts and Aristotle's concept of courage and virtue. A review of Medline and PsycINFO provided few relevant documents, reflecting the paucity of research on the concept of courage in psychiatry, palliative care, and psycho-oncology.
Results and conclusions: Courage is an important precursor to maintaining morale and therefore may play a critical causative role in demoralization. Courage is also intimately related to the concepts of self-esteem, free will, and personal values in life. The utility of the concept of courage is that it enables a response to a difficult circumstance. The main drawback of courage in a therapeutic sense is that it is often linked with cowardice, which has a pejorative connotation and is notoriously difficult to diagnose.