Magnitude of impairment in decisional capacity in people with schizophrenia compared to normal subjects: An overview. Schizophrenia Bulletin 32

The capacity of individuals with schizophrenia to make decisions related to research participation or clinical treat-ment has received increasing empirical attention. A number of studies have compared patients with schizophrenia to nonpsychiatric comparison subjects (NPCs) on structured measures of decision-making capacity. In this review, we evaluated the magnitude of the difference between schizo-phrenia and NPC groups reported across these studies, as well as the influence of sample characteristics on observed effect sizes. We also computed the effect sizes of group dif-ferences in psychopathology and cognitive deficits. Twelve studies met the search criteria; a majority of them reported data using the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Clinical Research (MacCAT-CR) or for Treatment (MacCAT-T). The mean effect size (evaluated in term