Feigning post-traumatic stress disorder on the PAI

✍ Scribed by Peter Scragg; Robert Bor; Marie-Clare Mendham

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 67 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1063-3995
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0879(200005)7:2<155::aid-cpp237>3.0.co;2-z

✦ Synopsis

Multiscale personality inventories have been used to detect dissimulation of PTSD. The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a self-report inventory which has validity indicators that may be used to detect dishonest or biased self-report. The accuracy of these validity indicators was tested by comparing non-traumatized individuals instructed to fake PTSD with patients diagnosed as having PTSD and normal controls. Twenty-five individuals completed the PAI with the instruction to feign PTSD. The PAI results of these participants were compared to a cohort of 19 patients diagnosed as suffering from PTSD and 21 controls. Eleven of the 25 individuals instructed to fake PTSD on the PAI produced a profile consistent with this diagnosis. However, more than half of the faked profiles were correctly identified as feigned by the validity indicators. Specificity of the validity indicators was very high. The results of this study indicate that the PAI can be one useful source of information for the clinician when assessing for the possible distortion of PTSD symptoms.