Individuals with psychiatric disorders, by definition have deficiency in emotional relatedness. Psychoses facilitates impaired reality testing too. This not a drawback, it is a well known and accepted fact taken into the diagnostic consideration of disorders that the pharmaceutical companies are setting out to establish a cure for. Trials in acute schizophrenia as well as those on schizophrenic children have diagnostic criteria suggesting severe symptoms (thus compelling absence of reality testing for study inclusion). Consent in such trials can seem futile as the person in context has definite deficiency in his or her capacity to understand and reason and offer approval for the process. Trial sponsors must be cognizant of the need to customize the process: what, when, who and how need to be considered in depth.

Today consent, assent, proxy consent, LARs are all commonplace concepts of discussion for IRBs and trial sponsors. Investigators always bear that primal responsibility of ensuring that consent is sought only when the subject has demonstrated adequate functional capacity for understanding. However the trial staff ought to be aware of these functional limitations in order to assure that investigators perform their task optimally. To become better equipped, study sponsor staff must seek outside consultation from representatives of patient advocacy groups, experts in consent capacity assessment, willing representatives from the subject population, legal, ethical and above all, medical psychiatric experts in order to gather the best possible knowledge and assist in optimal conduction of the informed consent process.