Advance Statements enable mental health patients to have their preferences considered in treatment decisions in the event of losing capacity, but their uptake is poor. This is for complex and often conflicting reasons and factors related to service user, clinician, and institutional priorities, which influence clinical practice. A Foucauldian discourse analysis approach was used to explore how 13 mental health clinicians positioned their role in relation to Advance Statements. Five positions emerged from the data: taking account of peoples’ wishes, enabling people to have their say (to a point), we know what’s best, firefighting with risk, and leverage and liability. Discursive practices demonstrated and reinforced power relations between patients, clinicians, and wider systems. These findings highlight the challenge of legitimizing the knowledge of patients and need for a cultural shift at a systems level, which recognizes the ways Advance Statements meet the needs of all stakeholders.

Background A high proportion of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders will at some point in their lives be assessed as not having the capacity to make their own decisions about pharmacological treatment or inpatient care (‘capacity’). Few will be helped to regain it before these interventions proceed. This is partly because effective and safe methods to do so are lacking. Our aim is to accelerate their development by testing, for the first time in mental healthcare, the feasibility, acceptability and safety of running an ‘Umbrella’ trial. This involves running, concurrently and under one multi-site infrastructure, multiple assessor-blind randomised controlled trials, each of which is designed to examine the effect on capacity of improving a single psychological mechanism (‘mechanism’). Our primary objectives are to demonstrate feasibility of (i) recruitment and (ii) data retention on the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Treatment (MacCAT-T; planned primary outcome for a future trial) at end-of-treatment. We selected three mechanisms to test: ‘self-stigma’, low self-esteem and the ‘jumping to conclusions’ bias. Each is highly prevalent in psychosis, responsive to psychological intervention, and hypothesised to contribute to impaired capacity. Methods Sixty participants with schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses, impaired capacity and one or more mechanism(s) will be recruited from outpatient and inpatient mental health services in three UK sites (Lothian, Scotland; Lancashire and Pennine; North West England). Those lacking capacity to consent to research could take part if the key criteria were met, including either proxy consent (Scotland) or favourable Consultee advice (England). They will be allocated to one of three randomised controlled trials, depending on which mechanism(s) they have. They will then be randomised to receive, over an 8-week period and in addition to treatment as usual (TAU), 6 sessions of either a psychological intervention which targets the mechanism, or 6 sessions of assessment of the causes of their incapacity (control condition). Participants are assessed at 0 (baseline), 8 (end-of-treatment) and 24 (follow-up) weeks post-randomisation using measures of capacity (MacCAT-T), mechanism, adverse events, psychotic symptoms, subjective recovery, quality of life, service use, anxiety, core schemata and depression. Two nested qualitative studies will be conducted; one to understand participant and clinician experiences and one to investigate the validity of MacCAT-T appreciation ratings. Discussion This will be the first Umbrella trial in mental healthcare. It will produce the first 3 single-blind randomised controlled trials of psychological interventions to support treatment decision-making in schizophrenia-spectrum disorder. Demonstrating feasibility will have significant implications not only for those seeking to support capacity in psychosis, but also for those who wish to accelerate the development of psychological interventions for other conditions. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04309435. Pre-registered on 16 March 2020.

SUMMARYWe describe the development of an innovative, nurse‐led chronic pain clinic in primary care. Benefit of the structured intervention was seen in terms of overall patient pain (as measured by the short form McGill‐Melzack pain scale) with no overall impact on drug costs. A significant proportion (54%) of patients taking non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs were deemed to be at risk of gastropathy and in need of gastroprotection as defined by the clinic protocol. Areas worthy of further study are discussed.

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