TY - JOUR
T1 - Symptom overreporting in combat veterans evaluated for PTSD
T2 - Differentiation on the basis of compensation seeking status
AU - Frueh, B. Christopher
AU - Gold, Paul B.
AU - De Arellano, Michael A.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Keith Chobot and Daniel W. Smith for their contributions to this project, and we extend our gratitude to Michael D. Homer and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Portions of this research were presented at the Society for Personality Assessment Midwinter Meeting, Denver, CO, March 1996.
PY - 1997/4
Y1 - 1997/4
N2 - We examined the role of compensation-seeking status on response patterns to self-report inventories of acute psychopathology and psychological distress in a group of 165 combat veterans evaluated for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Medical Center, Veterans completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Revised, Beck Depression Inventory, Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD, a fixed-response format version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale, and Impact of Events Scale as part of a standard assessment battery. Results showed that compensation-seeking veterans endorsed dramatically higher levels of psychopathology across measures and produced sharply elevated 'fake-bad' validity indices as compared to non-compensation-seeking veterans. Differences between the two groups on most scales and indices exceeded effect sizes of 1.0, even when effects of income, global assessment of functioning, and clinician-rated severity of PTSD were controlled for. It is suggested that the availability of VA disability compensation for combat-related PTSD impedes accurate initial assessment of veterans presenting for treatment and may impair estimation of long-term therapeutic outcome in this population.
AB - We examined the role of compensation-seeking status on response patterns to self-report inventories of acute psychopathology and psychological distress in a group of 165 combat veterans evaluated for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) Medical Center, Veterans completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Revised, Beck Depression Inventory, Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD, a fixed-response format version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale, and Impact of Events Scale as part of a standard assessment battery. Results showed that compensation-seeking veterans endorsed dramatically higher levels of psychopathology across measures and produced sharply elevated 'fake-bad' validity indices as compared to non-compensation-seeking veterans. Differences between the two groups on most scales and indices exceeded effect sizes of 1.0, even when effects of income, global assessment of functioning, and clinician-rated severity of PTSD were controlled for. It is suggested that the availability of VA disability compensation for combat-related PTSD impedes accurate initial assessment of veterans presenting for treatment and may impair estimation of long-term therapeutic outcome in this population.
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U2 - 10.1207/s15327752jpa6802_8
DO - 10.1207/s15327752jpa6802_8
M3 - Article
C2 - 9107014
AN - SCOPUS:0030909878
SN - 0022-3891
VL - 68
SP - 369
EP - 384
JO - Journal of Personality Assessment
JF - Journal of Personality Assessment
IS - 2
ER -