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Some projects can contain measures that ask about mental health in the general population or may use experimental tasks measuring cognitions that characterise certain conditions. If your project involves measures or procedures that relate to mental health, you should consider whether there should be a mental health professional involved in the research. This person should have the experience needed to support distressed participants and signpost them to the right services, should the need arise. They would also consult on the design of the study as an active collaborator to ensure that issues around mental health were thought through in advance.
Please note that of you intend to collect information in areas of risk, such as suicidality, Ethics Chairs will only approve the programme if you can demonstrate the involvement of a clinician.
If you would like help in identifying a clinical psychologist, please send a brief summary of the proposed work, explaining the need for clinical support, to Jean-Baptiste Pingault, CEHP Ethics Chair (j.pingault@ucl.ac.uk) who maintains a list of suitable colleagues who may be interested.
When conducting research with members of the public, adverse reactions occasionally occur. Additionally, it sometimes happens that a previously-undisclosed or -unknown mental health problem becomes apparent. In these circumstances it is important that we support such individuals appropriately. Planning for such support, as well as designing the protocol to minimize risk of adverse events when conducting research, is an important part of ethical review. We can only approve non-invasive research on healthy adult volunteers within PaLS and as such, we are obligated to carefully think through these issues.
