Edinburgh Napier University

  Clinicians are legally and ethically obliged to respect patients’ autonomy and the decisions patients make about their treatment, unless they lack “capacity” for such decision making. In the last 10 years in Scotland, people with psychosis have been judged to lack ‘capacity’ on at least 22,000 ocassions. Where capacity is lacking clinicians are obliged to support its return/retention so they can take part in decision making and avoid involuntary treatment. However, there are no effective and acceptable psychological interventions available to help them do this in practice. This project will test the feasibility of using innovative ‘umbrella’ trial methodology to both confirm the causes of their impaired treatment decision-making capacity, and accelerate the development of an effective intervention. The results will help transform the care of people with psychosis. Demonstrating the feasibility of our proposed methodology would also help to accelerate the development of interventions for other mental health problems.