MMPI Differences among Three Diagnostic Groups of Mexican-American State Hospital Patients

1987 ◽  
Vol 60 (3_part_2) ◽  
pp. 1071-1074
Author(s):  
Roberto J. Velasquez ◽  
Luis Gimenez

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there were significant MMPI differences among three diagnostic groups of Mexican-American psychiatric inpatients and whether a profile pattern was associated with each one, schizophrenia ( n = 32), antisocial personality disorder ( n = 15), and affective disorder with unipolar depression ( n = 18). Comparisons on the basic validity and clinical scales yielded only three significant differences, on the Frequency, Depression, and Schizophrenia scales. No unique profile patterns were found; groups showed a similar mean profile configuration, with elevations on the Psychopathic Deviate and Schizophrenia scales. Overall, antisocial men appeared on the MMPI less disturbed than either the depressive or schizophrenic men. The results are consistent with previous findings which suggest that the MMPI scores may correspond poorly with DSM-III diagnostic groups. The results also suggested that Mexican-Americans in psychiatric facilities, irrespective of diagnosis, may respond similarly on the MMPI.

Author(s):  
Barbara Gawda

AbstractThe current study was designed to show the differentiation of narrative styles in individuals with high scores in Psychopathic deviate (Pd) scale and develop a method enabling identification of psychopathic personality traits based on linguistic indicators. 600 spontaneous narrations related to emotional topics have been examined for grammar, syntactic, and lexical indicators. The indicators have been selected based on a review related to language of psychopaths. The narrations were written by 200 persons who were also tested for psychopathic deviate and intelligence level, including prisoners diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Independent judges identified the linguistic indicators which were then counted for each person with the use of computer software. The configuration profiles of the linguistic indicators/narrative styles were established using k-mean clustering method. Then, ANOVA was performed to show which clusters differentiate the levels of psychopathic deviate. The findings show there are two configurations of language features (important: single features were not examined) associated with high levels of psychopathic deviate patterns. Two narrative styles were identified, labelled demonstrative-digressive-egocentric-emotional-dogmatic and reserved-focused on the topic-repetitive, which indicate high psychopathic deviate traits. The ROC curves were applied to establish the prediction of the narrative styles for high psychopathic deviate scores.


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