People with intellectual disabilities are a group at specific risk during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic because of marked mental and physical health multimorbidity (Cuypers et al., 2020; Turk, Landes, Formica, & Goss, 2020). The social distancing and isolation measures implemented to manage the pandemic are known to impair mental health (Brooks et al., 2020; Torales, O'Higgins, Castaldelli-Maia, & Ventriglio, 2020), and this burden is also likely to be greater for people with intellectual disabilities, because they have generally poorer coping abilities (Courtenay & Perera, 2020). Caring for people with intellectual disability is stressful, leading, even under normal conditions, to high levels of perceived stress and burnout (Panicker &

This study investigated the ability of people with an intellectual disability to consent to psychological research. The criteria employed were based on the three elements of informed consent: information, competence and voluntariness. Participants were 40 people with an intellectual disability who had agreed to take part in a larger research study investigating their ability to consent to behavioural or medical treatment. A brief questionnaire consisting of six questions was administered to each participant to discover the extent of their ability to consent to take part in the larger study. A scoring protocol was developed to determine whether participants had answered each question satisfactorily. People appeared to understand the nature of the research, but had a limited understanding of the risks and benefits involved or of their right to refuse to participate or to drop out of the study. It is concluded that researchers must carefully assess the ability of people with an intellectual disability to consent before recruiting them to research studies and must be aware of the potential for this client group to agree to participate without fully understanding the implications.

This study introduces a measure that may enable clinicians to make more systematic assessments of people's capacity to consent. A number of issues surrounding the complex area of consent to treatment are also raised.