Personality Assessment Inventory Profile and Predictors of Elevations Among Dissociative Disorder Patients

Abstract

Assessing patients with dissociative disorders (DD) using personality tests is difficult. On the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 1989), DD patients often obtain elevations on multiple clinical scales as well as on validity scales that were thought to indicate exaggeration yet have been shown to be elevated among traumatized individuals, including those with DD. No research has been conducted to determine how DD patients score on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; L. C. Morey, 1991), which includes the symptom exaggeration scale Negative Impression (NIM) and the malingering scales Malingering Index (MAL) and Rogers Discriminant Function (RDF). The goals of this study were to document the PAI profile of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) patients and to determine how the validity and Schizophrenia scales are related to other PAI scales as well as dissociation. A total of 42 inpatients with DID or DDNOS were assessed on the PAI as well as the Dissociative Experiences Scale–II. The DID/DDNOS patients were elevated on many PAI scales, including NIM and, to a lesser extent, MAL, but not RDF. Dissociation scores significantly and uniquely predicted NIM scores above and beyond Depression and Borderline Features. In addition, after we controlled for MAL and RDF, dissociation was positively associated with NIM. In contrast, after we controlled for the other 2 scales, dissociation was not related to MAL and was negatively related to RDF, indicating that RDF and, to a lesser extent, MAL are better correlates of feigning in DD patients than NIM.

Keywords:

• dissociation
• dissociative disorders
• Personality Assessment Inventory

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to warmly thank the patients and clinicians of the Sheppard Pratt Health Systems’ Trauma Disorders Program who volunteered to participate in this study.