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Measuring Symptom Exaggeration in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder using the MMPI-2 and the Personality Assessment Inventory Symptom Validity Scales  

Kong, Sung-Whoi (Department of Psychiatry, Eulji University School of Medicine)
Chae, Jeong-Ho (Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea)
Lee, Jong-Hun (Department of Psychiatry3, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea)
Hahn, Sang-Woo (Department of Psychiatry, Soonchunhyang University of College of Medicine)
Park, Eun-Jin (Department of Psychiatry, Eulji University School of Medicine)
Choi, Kyeong-Sook (Department of Psychiatry, Eulji University School of Medicine)
Publication Information
Anxiety and mood / v.8, no.1, 2012 , pp. 22-30 More about this Journal
Abstract
Objective : We investigated whether Posttraumatic stress disorder patients have a higher tendency to exaggerate the extent of their psychological symptoms compared to other psychiatric patients. Methods : Medical records of patients, who had received psychiatric treatment at four university hospitals in Korea between January 2009 and December 2010, were retrospectively reviewed. We compared a group of 37 patients diagnosed with PTSD, and another group of 41 patients diagnosed with neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders according to the ICD-10. To compare the extent of malingering in the two groups, we compared the validity scales of MMPI-2 and Personality Assessment Inventory. We determined the number of participants in both groups feigning their responses by using various cutoff scores of the validity indicators. Results : The PTSD group showed significantly higher scores on the F (p=0.001), F (B)(p=0.000), F (P)(p=0.030), F-K (p=0.003) scale of the MMPI-2 compared to the other group of psychiatric patients. The PTSD group had a significantly higher NIM score (p=0.001) but a lower PIM score (p=0.020) of the PAI compared to the other group of psychiatric patients. Using the cutoff scores, the PTSD group showed a significantly higher number of patients who feigned responses compared to the other group ($Fb{\geq}75$ (p=0.010), $F-K{\geq}1$ (p=0.005), $F-K{\geq}10$ (p=0.011) from the MMPI-2, and $NIM{\geq}80$ (p=0.001) from the PAI). Conclusion : These results suggest that PTSD patients have a tendency to exaggerate their symptom. This group of patients overreported the severity of their condition during standardized personality assessment that included the MMPI-2 or PAI compared to patients diagnosed with other psychiatric disorders. Additional research is required to determine the factors influencing symptom exaggeration in PTSD.
Keywords
PTSD; Symptom exaggeration; Malingering; MMPI-2; PAI;
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