DETECTING FEIGNED DEPRESSION AND SCHIZOPHRENIA ON THE MMPI-2

Increasingly, investigations evaluating the effectiveness of the MMPI- 2 in the assessment of malingering employ methodologies whereby resear ch participants are asked to feigned specific disorders rather than ju st to ''fake bad.'' Yet there is little research addressing the issue of whether different validity scales and indicators work differently i n the detection of different feigned disorders. In this study the comp arative effectiveness of a number of validity scales and indicators on the MMPI-2 to assess feigned depression and feigned schizophrenia wer e evaluated. Overall, the validity scales and indicators were better a t detecting feigned schizophrenia than they were in detecting feigned depression, attributable, most likely, to closer familiarity with depr essive experiences. The validity scales F, Fb, and F(p) best distingui sh patients with schizophrenia from participants feigning schizophreni a, and F and Fb best distinguish patients with depression from partici pants feigning depression.