Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2)

Link:Pearson Assessments: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) - personality assessment, psychological assessment, forensics, psychopathology

Relevant to a range of contemporary applications, the MMPI-2 instrument remains the most widely used and widely researched test of adult psychopathology. Used by clinicians to assist with the diagnosis of mental disorders and the selection of appropriate treatment methods, the MMPI-2 test continues to help meet the assessment needs of mental health professionals in an ever-changing environment.

I took this test a couple weeks ago and I got my results back. My therapist admits that he doesn't have much experience interpreting results from this test, but my scores were very high regarding anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress, and if the the test were interpreted in absence of any other data would show that I have a psychosis, possibly like schizophrenia, but since that's obviously not the case, it would be more accurate to pull out a term that psychologists stopped using about twenty some odd years ago and call me neurotic. In other words, my anxiety and depression severely interfere with my life. While on the surface this sounds like one of those "well, duh!" conclusions, it helps us pinpoint a few areas that we can address in therapy. The test also showed that I may have been trying to make myself look worse than I am (there are ways to tell if you are trying to make yourself look better or worse based on the answers you give on the test) I'll have my psychiatrist look at the results when I see him on Friday to see if the results can help him in his decision on which medications to try.

Another link that describes the MMPI in further detail can be found at this page: MMPI: QUESTIONS TO ASK

The MMPI has ten clinical scales and three validity scales plus a host of supplementary scales. The clinical scales were originally intended to
distinguish "pure" groups with psychiatric disorders. Therefore, the actual names of the scales assert bold and, sometimes, exotic-sounding
psychiatric labels. For example, Scale 1 is referred to as the hypochondriasis scale, Scale 8 is labeled the schizophrenia scale, Scale 9 is labeled the hypomania scale, Scale 4 is the psychopathic deviate scale, and Scale 7 is the psychasthenia scale. Other scales reflect more understandable symptoms such as Scale 2, depression; Scale 3, hysteria; Scale 5, masculinity-femininity; Scale 6, paranoia; and Scale 0, social introversion.

Researchers quickly found out that the scales were not able to be "pure" measures of the psychiatric diagnostic groups (in part this is due to the overlap in symptoms in some of the disorders). Thus, an elevation on Scale 8 did not mean that the client was definitely schizophrenic. As a result, the numbers of the subscales quickly replace the psychiatric labels in common usage. Thus, instead of talking about the hypochondriasis scale, the clinician will talk about Scale 1.