Personality testing and epilepsy: comparison of two MMPI-2 correction procedures.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is widely used for assessing psychopathology. However, its reliability in people with neurologic disease has been questioned. This concern is especially true for epilepsy, a disease with symptoms, i.e., seizures, that frequently include experiences likely to suggest psychopathology. Correction procedures, in which select items are removed and the test is rescored, may improve MMPI-2 specificity. The MMPI-2 was administered to 27 subjects with epilepsy, and the results were compared before and after application of three correction procedures: rational, statistical, and combined. The statistical correction resulted in clinically significant T-score changes (> or = 5 points) in two MMPI-2 clinical scales, while a combined correction procedure produced clinically significant changes in three scales. In the subgroup of patients with intractable epilepsy, two noncorrected scale T-scores > or = 65 fell to the normal range with both the statistical and combined procedures. These results suggest cautious interpretation of standard MMPI-2 scores in patients with epilepsy.
Nelson
Linda D
LD
Department of Neurology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
Elder
Joseph T
JT
Groot
Jantje
J
Tehrani
Pany
P
Grant
Arthur C
AC
D000328:Adult; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008950:MMPI / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010551:Personality; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D011599:Psychopathology / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity