Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most widely used psychological test of [Page 608]all time. It is routinely administered to patients in psychiatric hospitals and mental health clinics, students in college counseling centers, individuals involved in the criminal justice system, and applicants for certain areas of employment (and some graduate school programs). It is suitable for use with adults aged 18 and older, and there is an adolescent version (MMPI-A) for ages 14 to 18.

The MMPI was first published in 1943 by Starke Hathaway and J. C. McKinley of the University of Minnesota and revised in 1989 to become the MMPI-2. It is currently published by the University of Minnesota Press and marketed through Pearson Assessments. The MMPI-2 consists of 567 declarative statements that the examinee indicates as either true or false about herself or himself and takes approximately 60 to 90 minutes to complete. The test was originally designed as an objective measure for obtaining clinical-diagnostic information in psychiatric and general medical settings. Although the original clinical scales no longer match our current understanding of psychopathology, the vast amount of research on the MMPI and the MMPI-2 can lead to an enhanced understanding of how the individual is functioning (i.e., people with particular patterns to their scores tend to display particular characteristics). A skilled clinician can garner information about symptoms, personality, relationship style, response to stress, level of distress, self-perception, and many other aspects of functioning, and then can facilitate treatment planning and/or differential diagnosis.

The MMPI-2 generates a variety of scores, including the 10 original clinical scales, 9 restructured clinical scales, 8 validity scales, 15 content scales, subscales for many of these scales, and a host of supplementary scales. These scales cover areas ranging from depression and anxiety to self-esteem and openness to treatment to gender identity and level of distress. The sheer volume of information is often confusing and overwhelming to the novice. In response to this, there are a number of computerized interpretive programs on the market, some targeted toward a particular setting (e.g., forensic, personnel). The use of these reports has dramatically increased in recent years, but remains somewhat controversial among the psychological community because they cannot take into consideration the individual's history and current circumstances. Such reports typically have a warning stating that the content should serve as hypotheses that a trained clinician would use as a starting point.