Since the 1970s, a wide body of research has suggested that the accuracy of clinical risk assessments of violence might be increased if clinicians used actuarial tools. Despite considerable progress in recent years in the development of such tools for violence risk assessment, they remain primarily research instruments, largely ignored in daily clinical practice. We argue that because most exis...

INTRODUCTION Competence is a prerequisite for informed consent. Patients who are found to be competent are entitled to accept or refuse the proposed treatment. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in studies examining competence for treatment in psychiatric patients. In this study, we aimed to investigate the decision-making competencies of inpatients with a range of psychiatri...

The Macarthur Health Sector has embraced the concept of Ambulatory Care within all clinical streams. The Macarthur Model for Ambulatory Services is multi faceted and has sought to encompass and combine the best features of many established services throughout Australia and the world. The results is one integrated, cohesive model that allows patients multiple points of entry and exit. Ambulatory...

BACKGROUND Patients' informed consent prior to treatment initiation is an essential component of contemporary clinical practice, but sometimes, patients lack decision-making capacity for treatment. Such capacity can be reliably assessed with standardized tools used, and the MacArthur competence assessment tool for treatment (MacCAT-T) is one of the most widely used instruments. METHODS The ob...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine whether scoring of the gestures point,give, and show were correlated across measurement tools used to assess gesture production in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHOD Seventy-eight children with ASD between the ages of 23 and 37 months participated. Correlational analyses were conducted to determine whether performance of 3 ...

BACKGROUND There is limited data on the recovery of factors associated with decisional capacity in patients with psychosis. AIMS To study the relationship between changes in mental capacity, symptoms and global functioning using structured measures during treatment for psychosis. METHOD Fifty-six patients with psychosis were assessed for capacity to consent to treatment on admission and at ...

A cross-sectional study among adult inpatients with non-organic psychiatric disorders, and among their key relatives, assessed their comprehension and recall of key information in consent forms. It also assessed their capacity to consent to participate in two hypothetical randomised controlled trials (RCTs) with different potential risks and burdens, using structured questionnaires and recorded...