An MMPI-2 scale to identify history of physical abuse

This study attempted to extract an MMPI-2 scale identifying adult male and female victims of childhood physical abuse. Such a scale may alert clinicia ns early in treatment to issues related to trauma. Victims may nor disclose such a history because of discomfort or because they may nor make the conn ection between past events and present-day functioning. Early detection of victims is important because victims are more prone to enter abusive relati onships as adults or to become abusers. The sample (N = 201), recruited fro m a community mental health center and a low-fee outpatient center to repre sent a broad clinical population, was divided into a physical abuse reporti ng group and a comparison group. A stepwise discriminant function analysis based on Wilk's lambda yielded 95.5% correct classification (using 43 MMPI- 2 items), suggesting that the MMPI-2 can be an important aid in the identif ication of individuals who suffered from childhood physical abuse.