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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Treatment as usual (TAU) control practices in the PROSPECT Study
— managing the interaction and tension between research design and ethics | | Author(s) | Charles F Reynolds III, Howard Degenholtz, Lisa S Parker |
| Corporate Author | PROSPECT Study Group |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 16, no 6, June 2001 |
| Pages | pp 602-608 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Suicide ; General practice ; Research ; Social ethics ; Methodology ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The use of treatment as usual (TAU) as a control condition may pose the considerable challenge of maintaining both scientific rigour and meeting high ethical standards in experiments on human subjects. The authors illustrate this tension and explore the relationship between research design and ethics in the US PROSPECT (Prevention of Suicide in Primary care Elderly - Collaborative Trial) study. Participating primary care practices are assigned to either an intervention arm (including provision of depression health specialists) or to an enhanced care arm (TAU, with the addition of screening and assessment services). The latter is to be used as a benchmark for measuring the effectiveness of PROSPECT's intervention. However, the epidemiological and clinical literature has linked TAU to high rates of suicide in older people, related to unrecognised and untreated or under-treated depression. The authors present their approach which enhances TAU, whereby primary care physicians are given information concerning the psychiatric status of their patients, and yet maintains rigour and meets high ethical standards. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010716212 A |
| Classmark | ENR: EV: L5: 3A: TQ: 3D: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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