Views and attitudes of Turkish psychiatrists about informed consent

Abstract

In this study views and attitudes of psychiatrists about some ethical dilemmas containing problems related with informed consent in psychiatry is surveyed A semi-structured questionarre was used which contains 67 questions asking to psychiatrists sociodemografic statues, questions about some ethical dilemmas and about theoretical, philosophical, psychiatric views. Of these questions three were fictive cases (vignettes) about recession of treatment of patient for the research purposes, one was about the view of psychiatrists whether they believe that the patients are informed and their consent are taken formally or not. Three questions were about theoretical-philosophical psychiatric views of psychiatrists. one question was about whether they find the education of ethics sufficient in psychiatry or not. Four questions were about sociodemographic statues of psychiatrists. Thus totally aforementioned 12 questions contained in this article and other questions are not related with the issue are not handled here and will be a subject of another investigation. Views and attidudes of psychiatrists are found to be significantly different according to their socidemographic variables and theoretical philosophical psychiatric views. Especially psychologically oriented psychiatrists are found to be paternalistic in attitudes as informed consent considered. Additionally as views of psychiatrsits about social etiology considered significant differences are found in attitudees about informed consent. Biologically oriented psychiatrists are found to be giving more importance to consent of the relatives rather than the patients' in schizophrenic cases. And women psychiatrists are found to be more conservative in deciding the recession of treatment of the bipolar patient case.