Psychiatric genetics researchers' views on offering return of results to individual participants

In the middle of growing consensus that genomics researchers should offer to return clinically valid, medically relevant, and medically actionable findings identified in the course of research, psychiatric genetics researchers face new challenges. As they uncover the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders through genome ‐wide association studies and integrate whole genome and whole exome sequencing to their research, there is a pressing need for examining these researchers' views regarding the return of results (RoR) and the unique challenges for offering RoR from psychiatric genetics research. Based on qualitati ve interviews with 39 psychiatric genetics researchers from different countries operating at the forefront of their field, we provide an insider's view of researchers' practices regarding RoR and the most contentious issues in psychiatry researchers' decision‐making around RoR, including what are the strongest ethical, scientific, and practical arguments for and against offering RoR from this research. Notably, findings suggest that psychiatric genetics researchers (85%) overwhelmingly favor offering RoR of at least some findings, but only 22% of researchers are returning results. Researcher s identified a number of scientific and practical concerns about RoR, and about how to return results in a responsible way to patients diagnosed with a severe psychiatric disorder. Furthermore, findings help highlight areas for further discussion and resolution of conf...
Source: American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research