Participating in Research: Are Bipolar Patients Capable of Consent?

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry recently published a study in which researchers examined the capacity of bipolar disorder patients to consent to participate in clinical research. Subjects included 31 outpatients with bipolar disorder (BP), 31 schizophrenia patients, and 28 healthy comparison subjects. Decisional capacity of all patients was evaluated with the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research. Although BP patients showed worse understanding than healthy subjects, BP patients’ levels of understanding were very similar to those of schizophrenia patients. In all patients, however, levels of understanding improved with repetition of disclosed information. These results, according to the authors, suggest that improved consent procedures may facilitate the enrollment of bipolar patients in clinical research.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?tmpl=NoSidebarfile&db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=17503977&dopt=Abstract

-LS