[Competence to make decisions: the psychology of deliberate decision making].

This paper examines the psychological structure of mental competence, conceived of as competence in deliberate decision making. Analysis of that structure may be useful in understanding mental incompetence, as it occurs among some elderly persons. Mental competence not only depends on a number of cognitive abilities, such as foreseeing consequences, but also on the intactness of emotions, insight in one's own emotions, and abilities for emotion regulation.