Scale 8 elevations on the MMPI-2 among women survivors of childhood sexualabuse: Evaluating posttraumatic stress, depression, and dissociation as predictors

This paper investigated elevations on Scale 8 of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) in women survivors of childhood sexual abu se (CSA) in order to assess whether symptoms of posttraumatic stress disord er, depression, or dissociation account for such elevations. Participants w ere 73 women seeking outpatient treatment for CSA after-effects at a univer sity-based community mental health center. A stepwise multiple regression a nalysis was conducted, including measures of commonly reported symptoms in CSA survivors: depression, posttraumatic stress, and dissociation. Regressi on analyses revealed that the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Dissociat ive Experiences Scale (DES) accounted for the most variance in Scale 8 scor es (59%), with the BDI as the best predictor. The Impact of Event Scale (IE S) did nor predict Scale 8 scores significantly above that achieved by the model above. Cross-validation results indicated good generalizability. Resu lts suggest that depression and dissociation contribute most to scores on S cale 8. Implications of these findings for the clinical and empirical use o f the MMPI-2 with CSA survivors are discussed.