Relationship between Competency to Consent to Treatment and Psychological Well-Being: Mediating Effect of Empowerment and Emotion

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the competency to consent to the treatment of psychiatric outpatients and to confirm the role of empowerment and emotional variables in the relationship between competency to consent to treatment and psychological well-being. The study participants consisted of 191 psychiatric outpatients who voluntarily consented to the study among psychiatric outpatients. As a result of competency to consent to treatment evaluation, the score of the psychiatric outpatient’s consent to treatment was higher than the cut-off point for both the overall and sub-factors, confirming that they were overall good. In addition, the effect of the ability of application on psychological well-being among competency to consent to treatment was verified using PROCESS Macro, and the double mediation effect using empowerment and emotional variables was verified to provide an expanded understanding of this. As a result of the analysis, empowerment completely mediated the relation between the ability of application and psychological well-being, and the relation between the ability of application and psychological well-being was sequentially mediated by empowerment and emotion-related variables. Based on these findings, the implications and limitations of this study were discussed.