The relationship between MCMI personality scales and clinician-generated DSM-III-R personality disorder diagnoses

This study examined the relationship between elevations on the personality scales of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) and clinician-generated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) diagnoses for 101 psychiatric patients at a VA medical center/psychiatric hospital in the Southeastern United States. Personality disorder diagnoses were made by employing a personality symptom checklist that consisted of all the verbatim criteria for personality disorders contained in the DSM-III-R. Clinicians who completed the checklists were required to have had at least 5 hr of direct contact with the patients who completed the MCMI. The results indicated that only the Schiozotypal scale of the MCMI was related to its respective DSM-III-R personality disorder in the simple correlation. An examination of the diagnostic efficiency statistics for each of the MCMI personality disorder scales revealed overall low sensitivity, poor specificity, poor positive predictive power, and low diagnostic power, which suggests that the MCMI may have only limited utility in identifying personality disorders.