Skip Navigation


Schizophrenia Bulletin Advance Access originally published online on September 28, 2005
Schizophrenia Bulletin 2006 32(1):129-136; doi:10.1093/schbul/sbj003
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
32/1/129    most recent
sbj003v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Muroff, J. R
Right arrow Articles by Kim, S. Y H
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Muroff, J. R
Right arrow Articles by Kim, S. Y H
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Is Psychiatric Research Stigmatized? An Experimental Survey of the Public

Jordana R Muroff2,4,, Sarah L Hoerauf2 and Scott Y H Kim1,2–3,
2 Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, University of Michigan
3 Department of Psychiatry and the Bioethics Program, University of Michigan
4 Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System

1To whom correspondence should be addressed; Bioethics Program, 300 North Ingalls Street, 7C27, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, tel: 734-936-5222, fax: 734-936-8944, e-mail: scottkim{at}umich.edu.

Although decisional incapacity can be caused by various medical conditions, incapacity due to mental illness is often singled out for scrutiny in research ethics policy debates. We assessed whether there is a general discriminatory perception of mental illness research and, if so, aimed to characterize the nature of that perception. We conducted an experimental, randomized Internet survey of the general public. We recruited 3140 adults through a web-research survey panel, with oversampling of racial and ethnic minorities and the elderly. Willingness to allow medical versus mental illness research was compared by randomly assigning the respondents to 1 of 7 web-based experimental scenarios depicting a subject being considered for research participation. Respondents were more willing to allow research with medically ill than the mentally ill subjects, even when ethically relevant factors were equal. This difference was mediated through the respondents' tendency to view mentally ill subjects as more decisionally incapable than medically ill subjects, even when they were told that the subjects portrayed were in fact competent. Discriminatory perception of mental illness research exists and is mediated by an outdated view of mental illness and decisional capacity. Policymakers and institutional review board members may need to guard against its influence in their deliberations.

Keywords: ethics / stigma / mental illness / schizophrenia / research attitudes / decision-making capacity


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 FocusHome page
Bibliography for Ethics, Professionalism, and End of Life Care
Focus, January 1, 2007; 5(4): 417 - 419.
[Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.