Abstract:
Psychiatric genetic research investigates the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders
with the aim of more effectively understanding, treating, or, ultimately, preventing
such disorders. Given the challenges of recruiting research participants into such
studies, the potential for long‐term benefits of such research, and seemingly minimal
risk, a strong claim could be made that all non‐acute psychiatric inpatients, includ‐
ing forensic and involuntary patients, should be included in such research, provided
they have capacity to consent. There are tensions, however, regarding the ethics
of recruiting psychiatric inpatients into such studies. In this paper our intention is
to elucidate the source of these tensions from the perspective of research ethics
committee interests and decision‐making. We begin by defining inpatient status
and outline some of the assumptions surrounding the structures of inpatient care.
We then introduce contemporary conceptions of vulnerability, including Florencia
Luna’s account of vulnerability which we use as a framework for our analysis. While
psychiatric inpatients could be subject to consent‐related vulnerabilities, we suggest
that a particular kind of exploitation‐related vulnerability comes to the fore in the
context of our case study. Moreover, a subset of these ethical concerns takes on
particular weight in the context of genetic research in low‐ and middle‐income coun‐
tries. At the same time, the automatic exclusion of inpatients from research elicits
justice‐related vulnerabilities
