Enabling Legal Capacity Through Decision-Making Support.
Led by Dr Jill Craigie, this project will critically examine decision-making support as a strategy for jointly satisfying the two fundamental imperatives of protection and respect. It has a particular focus on intellectual disability and autism.
Support and Independence in the Community.
Dr Hanna Kienzler leads this project using multi-site ethnography to explore the diverse meaning of (and barriers to) independence, community and support for persons with mental problems across socio-cultural contexts in Ghana, the occupied Palestinian territory, and England.
Supporting Advance Directives.
Supported decision-making must be tailored to persons with diverse mental disorders in diverse socio-cultural contexts. This work, led by Dr Gareth Owen and Dr Tania Gergel, will focus on Bipolar Affective Disorder and the real-life implementation of advance directives as persons with Bipolar strive to provide guidance for their own treatment.
Insight.
Professor Wayne Martin leads a project considering the role of ‘insight’ in mental health care, a key concept when it comes to treatment decisions. How can a person who lacks awareness that they are unwell competently assess treatment options for an illness they do not recognise, and what legal guidelines should frame decisions on coercive treatments?
Decision-making and Metacognition.
This project will link decision-making ability to the related concept of metacognition and will use cognitive neuroscience methods to inform questions around decision-making ability and support. This research is led by Professor Anthony David.
Contested Assessment.
This project will consider the legal and clinical evidence that makes the assessment of decision-making capacity in a proportion of cases contested or hard. It aims to advance satisfactory resolutions and educational interventions. This research is led by Dr Gareth Owen and barrister/academic Alex Ruck Keene.