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Biomedical subjects

P S Appelbaum

Publications and source records attributed to P S Appelbaum.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Informed Consent in Early Psychosis Research: National Institute of Mental Health workshop, November 15, 2000.

Recent research on the early detection and treatment of schizophrenia has generated significant scientific interest along with considerable controversy and debate. Because our ability to alleviate fully the symptoms and deficits of established schizophrenia is limited, the prospect of interrupting disease progression early is compelling. At the same time, in the absence of an infallible marker of disease risk, there are serious questions about the safety, feasibility, and ethics of intervention research on "at-risk" or putatively prodromal individuals. A workshop, Informed Consent in Early Psychosis Research, was convened by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) on November 15, 2000, to review the results of recent research on early detection and intervention in schizophrenia. Beginning with the assumptions that (1) treatment of asymptomatic individuals with antipsychotic medication is not appropriate in research or clinical care, and (2) neither data nor clinical consensus defines optimal intervention for symptomatic at-risk individuals, workshop participants-including clinical researchers, mental health consumers and family members, bioethicists, community health care providers, and NIMH staff-systematically reviewed available data on the potential risks and benefits of alternate approaches to the management of prodromal states. Ethical issues involved in early detection and intervention studies were discussed. Workshop participants summarized information presented during the meeting into informed consent "bullets" that must be communicated to, and understood and appreciated by, potential research participants.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Thinking carefully about outpatient commitment.

We are witnessing an unprecedented wave of interest in outpatient commitment. In part, enthusiasm for outpatient commitment stems from concerns about highly publicized acts of violence by persons with mental disorders, although this is one of the weaker justifications for new laws. Provision of involuntary outpatient treatment may be an important component of a system of care for persons with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other serious mental illnesses for reasons entirely unrelated to the prevention of headline-grabbing acts of violence. The existing data, all imperfect, tend to favor the efficacy of outpatient commitment as a means of stabilizing patients in the community, and many clinicians who have been involved in the process share this view. Acknowledging limitations in the empirical evidence favoring outpatient commitment, the author reviews key issues for policy makers to address in considering or revising these statutes.

Coercion↗
PubMed2001

Mandated community treatment: beyond outpatient commitment.

Outpatient commitment, although often viewed as merely an extension of inpatient commitment, is only one of a growing array of legal tools used to mandate treatment adherence. The authors describe various forms of mandated community treatment. People with severe and chronic mental disorders often depend on goods and services provided by the social welfare system. Benefits disbursed by representative payees and the provision of subsidized housing have both been used as leverage to ensure treatment adherence. Many discharged patients are arrested for criminal offenses. Favorable disposition of their cases by a mental health court may be tied to participation in treatment. Under outpatient commitment statutes, judges can order committed patients to comply with prescribed treatment. Patients may attempt to maximize their control over treatment in the event of later deterioration by executing an advance directive. The ideological posturing that currently characterizes the field must be replaced by an evidence-based approach.

Advance Directives↗
PubMed2000

Decisional capacity for informed consent in schizophrenia research.

BACKGROUND: The adequacy of subjects' informed consent to research is the focus of an important public and professional debate. The potential impairment of decisional capacity in persons with schizophrenia is central to the discussions. This study ascertains the decisional capacity for informed consent in schizophrenic research subjects, to determine if reduced capacity relates to specific aspects of psychopathologic features and to test the hypothesis that reduced capacity can be remediated with an educational informed consent process. METHODS: Decisional capacity was assessed for 30 research subjects with schizophrenia and 24 nonill (normal) comparison subjects. Measures of psychopathologic features and cognition were obtained for the subjects with schizophrenia. Subjects who performed poorly on the decisional capacity measure received an educational intervention designed to improve their ability to provide informed consent and were then retested. RESULTS: The patient group did not perform as well as the controls on initial decisional capacity assessment. Poor performance was modestly related to the extent of symptoms but robustly related to cognitive impairments. Following the educational intervention, the performance of subjects with schizophrenia was equal to that of the nonill comparison group. CONCLUSIONS: Many persons with schizophrenia may be challenged by the cognitive demands of an informed consent process for research participation. In many cases, their reduced capacity can be compensated by a more intensive educational intervention as part of the informed consent process.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

A classification tree approach to the development of actuarial violence risk assessment tools.

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 existing actuarial tools are based on a main effects regression approach, they do not adequately reflect the contingent nature of the clinical assessment processes. To enhance the use of actuarial violence risk assessment tools, we propose a classification tree rather than a main effects regression approach. In addition, we suggest that by employing two decision thresholds for identifying high- and low-risk cases--instead of the standard single threshold--the use of actuarial tools to make dichotomous risk classification decisions may be further enhanced. These claims are supported with empirical data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study.

Actuarial Analysis↗
PubMed2000

Risk-benefit decision making for treatment of depression during pregnancy.

OBJECTIVE: The Committee on Research on Psychiatric Treatments of the American Psychiatric Association identified treatment of major depression during pregnancy as a priority area for improvement in clinical management. The goal of this article was to assist physicians in optimizing treatment plans for childbearing women. METHOD: The authors' work group developed a decision-making model designed to structure the information delivered to pregnant women in the context of the risk-benefit discussion. Perspectives of forensic and decision-making experts were incorporated. RESULTS: The model directs the psychiatrist to structure the problem through diagnostic formulation and identification of treatment options for depression. Reproductive toxicity in five domains (intrauterine fetal death, physical malformations, growth impairment, behavioral teratogenicity, and neonatal toxicity) is reviewed for the potential somatic treatments. The illness (depression) also is characterized by symptoms of somatic dysregulation that compromise health during pregnancy. The patient actively participates and provides her evaluation of the acceptability of the various treatments and outcomes. Her capacity to participate in this process provides evidence of competence to consent. Included in the decision-making process are the patient's significant others and obstetrical physician. The process is ongoing, with the need for incorporation of additional data as the pregnancy and treatment response progress. CONCLUSIONS: The conceptual model provides structure to a process that is frequently stressful for both patients and psychiatrists. By applying the model, clinicians will ensure that critical aspects of the risk-benefit discussion are included in their care of pregnant women.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Violence and delusions: data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study.

OBJECTIVE: Previous work has suggested that delusions are associated with a higher risk of violence, particularly delusions in which patients believe that people are seeking to harm them or that outside forces are controlling their minds (denoted as "threat/control override" delusions). This study explores the relationship between delusions and violence among patients recently discharged from acute psychiatric hospitalization. METHOD: Data were drawn from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, a study of violence in the community that followed 1,136 recently discharged psychiatric patients for 1 year. Interviews at discharge and at five 10-week intervals gathered clinical, historical, situational, and dispositional information, including the presence and nature of delusional thoughts. Violence was ascertained from reports of subjects, collateral informants, and official records. RESULTS: Neither delusions in general nor threat/control override delusions in particular were associated with a higher risk of violent behavior. Comparisons with prior studies suggest that reliance on subject self-reports of delusional symptoms may result in mislabeling as delusions other phenomena that can contribute to violence. CONCLUSIONS: Although delusions can precipitate violence in individual cases, these data suggest that they do not increase the overall risk of violence in persons with mental illness in the year after discharge from hospitalization.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Commentary & analysis: the Draft Act Governing Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill: its genesis and its legacy.

As a follow-up to the preceding article first published in the February 1953 issue, Paul Appelbaum, M.D., offers a commentary and analysis on the revised Draft Act Governing Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill. He includes its psychiatric context in the five-year period between 1951 and 1955 and later developments related to involuntary commitment.

Commitment of Persons with Psychiatric Disorders↗
PubMed2000

Developing a clinically useful actuarial tool for assessing violence risk.

BACKGROUND: A new actuarial method for violence risk assessment--the Iterative Classification Tree (ICT)--has become available. It has a high degree of accuracy but can be time and resource intensive to administer. AIMS: To increase the clinical utility of the ICT method by restricting the risk factors used to generate the actuarial tool to those commonly available in hospital records or capable of being routinely assessed in clinical practice. METHOD: A total of 939 male and female civil psychiatric patients between 18 and 40 years old were assessed on 106 risk factors in the hospital and monitored for violence to others during the first 20 weeks after discharge. RESULTS: The ICT classified 72.6% of the sample as either low risk (less than half of the sample's base rate of violence) or high risk (more than twice the sample's base rate of violence). CONCLUSIONS: A clinically useful actuarial method exists to assist in violence risk assessment.

Actuarial Analysis↗
PubMed2000

Violent thoughts and violent behavior following hospitalization for mental disorder.

Using a standardized schedule of questions, this study examined (a) the prevalence of self-report of violent thoughts by patients hospitalized for mental disorders compared with nonpatients, (b) the persistence of violent thoughts after discharge, and (c) the relation between patients' violent thoughts while hospitalized and violent acts within 20 weeks after hospital discharge. About 1/3 of the patients reported thoughts of violence while hospitalized, more than twice the proportion found among nonpatients. Reporting violent thoughts in hospital was significantly related to engaging in violent acts within 20 weeks after discharge for non-White patients, patients without major mental disorder but with substance abuse diagnoses, patients with high symptom severity, and patients whose reports of violent thoughts persisted after discharge. Reporting violent thoughts was significantly related to measures of psychopathy, anger, and impulsiveness.

Adult↗