Assessing personality and psychopathology after traumatic brain injury with the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory–III

Abstract

Purpose: Despite the widespread use of objective personality inventories as part of neuropsychological assessments of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients, little research exists to support the use of these instruments with TBI populations. The purpose of the present study is two-fold: first, to examine the prevalence and extent of personality and psychopathological disturbance in TBI patients compared with a general psychiatric sample and, secondly, to determine whether personality profiles of TBI patients fall within a pathological range relative to normative psychiatric and non-psychiatric populations.

Methods: Age-, gender- and ethnically-matched TBI and psychiatric patients (n = 462) completed the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory–III (MCMI-III).

Results: TBI patients had more frequent elevations on histrionic, compulsive and somatoform scales compared with the matched psychiatric sample. Most scales for TBI patients fell outside of the range of the test's normative psychiatric population.

Conclusions: Implications for interpretation of MCMI-III profiles of TBI patients are discussed.

• Traumatic brain injury
• personality
• psychopathology
• MCMI-III