Capacity Assessment in Persons With Alzheimer's Disease

Study of Alzheimer's disease patients show a wide variability in decision-making abilities, especially for the consent to treatment and the ability to vote. No tools are available to assess the capacity to design a proxy. The purpose of this research is to assess simultaneously four decision-making abilities in persons with Alzheimer's disease: the capacity to consent to treatment, the capacity to vote and the capacity to design a proxy either to consent to treatment or to vote. This study will recruit 320 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 80 non-demented control subjects. Four decision-making questionnaires will be administered to participants to explore participant capacity to understand, reason, appreciate and make a choice about the capacity to consent to treatment, to vote and to design a proxy either to consent to treatment or to vote. Once validated in the first part of this research, the questionnaires will be used to study decision-making abilities and their determinants in patients with Alzheimer's disease and control subjects.