Empirical Derivation of a New MMPI-2 Scale for Identifying Probable Malingering in Personal Injury Litigants and Disability Claimants: The 15-Item Malingered Mood Disorder Scale (MMDS)

PTSD in Court III: Malingering, assessment, and the law

This journal's third article on PTSD in Court focuses especially on the topic's "court" component. It first considers the topic of malingering, including in terms of its definition, certainties, and uncertainties. As with other areas of the study of psychological injury and law, generally, and PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), specifically, malingering is a contentious area not only definitionally but also empirically, in terms of establishing its base rate in the index populations assessed in the field. Both current research and re-analysis of past research indicates that the malingering prevalence rate at issue is more like 15±15% as opposed to 40±10%. As for psychological tests used to assess PTSD, some of the better ones include the TSI-2 (Trauma Symptom Inventory, Second Edition; Briere, 2011), the MMPI-2-RF (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Second Edition, Restructured Form; Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008/2011), and the CAPS-5 (The Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5; Weathers, Blake, Schnurr, Kaloupek, Marx, & Keane, 2013b). Assessors need to know their own possible biases, the applicable laws (e.g., the Daubert trilogy), and how to write court-admissible reports. Overall conclusions reflect a moderate approach that navigates the territory between the extreme plaintiff or defense allegiances one frequently encounters in this area of forensic practice.

Psychological testing and the assessment of malingering

This article discusses the prevalence of feigning in both criminal and civil settings and various psychological assessments useful in detecting feigning. The focus of this information is on the various psychological assessments available to assist clinicians in making a determination of whether or not an individual is feigning and concludes with the recommendations that multiple assessments are necessary to improve the sensitivity of detection methods.