Question

typed 200 words, APA format, with references

Clinical psychology

Do the diagnostic risk factors for incapacity to consent generally indicate that psychiatric patients cannot consent to research?

Answer 1

First, while the MacCAT-CR scores of people with schizophrenia are often lower than those of healthy controls, several studies found that their mean scores were, in the judgment of experts, nevertheless adequate to consent to a research study.
Second, groups of individuals sharing a diagnosis are far from homogeneous. Standard deviations on the MacCAT-CR are often fairly large, and while many participants do not manifest capacity to consent, most do.
Third, the risk factors for decisional incapacity associated with the psychiatric diagnoses listed above may be no greater than those associated with several medical conditions.
Fourth, negative symptoms (such as short term memory deficits) are more predictive of incapacity to consent than positive symptoms (such as delusional beliefs or hallucinations). Thus, someone could have persistent delusional beliefs associated with a psychotic disorder and retain decisional capacity because these beliefs are not relevant to understanding and evaluating the research protocol in question.

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