An MMPI-2 Scale to Identify History of Physical Abuse

Abstract

This study attempted to extract an MMPI-2 scale identifying adult male and female victims of childhood physical abuse. Such a scale may alert clinicians early in treatment to issues related to trauma. Victims may not disclose such a history because of discomfort or because they may not make the connection between past events and present-day functioning. Early detection of victims is important because victims are more prone to enter abusive relationships as adults or to become abusers. The sample (N = 201), recruited from a community mental health center and a low-fee outpatient center to represent a broad clinical population, was divided into a physical abuse reporting group and a comparison group. A stepwise discriminant function analysis based on Wilks's lambda yielded 95.5% correct classification (using 43 MMPI-2 items), suggesting that the MMPI-2 can be an important aid in the identification of individuals who suffered from childhood physical abuse.