Investigated the possible use of the MMPI-168 as a screening instrument for identifying individuals (N = 27) with DSM 111 diagnosed borderline personality disorder. Using previously reported percentile norms for bright young college graduates as a reference, borderline patients as a group fell above the 98th percentile on the F, Hypochondriasis, Depression, Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviate, Psychasthenia and Schizophrenia scales, as well as the general psychopathology scale (PSY). Additionally, the borderline sample's mean score on the Paranoia scale was above the 95th percentile, and the mean Social Introversion scale was above the 90th percentile.
Almost equally distinguishing was the finding that the mean K scale score for the borderline sample fell as low as the 8th percentile for the normative college sample. These results demonstrate that the MMPI-168 response pattern of borderline patients was clearly distinguishable from the great majority of college graduates.
The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the potential utility of the MMPI-168 as a screening instrument for use in identifying borderline personality disorders in a population of ostensibly normal individuals. Because individuals with borderline personality disorders are characterized as highly unstable, impulsive, and manipulative, with alternating severe depression and destructive acting-out behavior, they may not be the most appropriate candidates for certain advanced academic or career pathways, or else may require special attention in the pursuit of such pathways. For example, impulsive acting-out behavior might be particularly undesirable in someone entrusted with policework; similarly, a tendency to act out conflicts through drug usage might be particularly problematic in a physician. In spite of these problematic personality traits, borderline individuals are often relatively bright (Perry & Klerman, 1980), and their personality problems actually may lead in the direction of academic pursuits as a social default. Thus, an efficient means of identifying individuals who may suffer from such personality disturbance could be an asset for programs in which large numbers of candidates must be screened. Because the borderline personality only recently has been widely recognized as a diagnostic entity, it is presently not known whether available psychiatric screening instruments will be effective in identifying such individuals.
The MMPI-168 is an abbreviated administration of the MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943), in which only the first 168 items are used (Overall & Gomez-Mont, 1974). Conventional MMPI scoring keys applied to the 168 items provide raw scores that can be converted to standard MMPI clinical scale scores using conversion tables provided by Overall, Higgens, and de Schweinitz (1976). The reduced number of items makes the MMPI-168 a reasonable choice as a screening instrument.
Recently, Overall and Eiland (1982) provided percentile norms for the MMPI-168 scale scores in a bright young college graduate population. Because much research has indicated that the MMPI is reasonably unaffected by differences in age, race, social class, and education (Lanyon, 1968), we propose to use those norms to evaluate the screening potential of the MMPI-168 with reference to the kind of populations in which screening for borderline personality disorders might be important. The norms provided by Overall and Eiland are of special interest because they include the percentile equivalents for a new general psychopathology scale (PSY) that was derived empirically to maximize separation between a bright young college graduate population and a