Assessment of genuine and simulated dissociative identity disorder on the structured interview of reported symptoms

Little is known about how to detect malingered dissociative identity disorder (DID). This study presents preliminary data from an ongoing study about the performance of DID patients on the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS, Rogers, Bagby, & Dickens, 1992), considered to be a "gold standard" structured interview in forensic psychology to detect feigning of psychological symptoms. Test responses from 20 dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients are compared to those of 43 well informed and motivated DID simulators. Both the simulators and DID patients endorsed such a high number of symptoms that their average overall scores would typically be interpreted as indicative of feigning. The simulators' mean scores were significantly higher than those of the DID patients on only four out of 13 scales. These results provide preliminary evidence that well informed and motivated simulators are able to fairly successfully simulate DID patients and avoid detection on the SIRS. Furthermore, many DID patients may be at risk for being inaccurately labeled as feigning on the SIRS.