MMPI Assessment of the DSM-III-R Histrionic Personality Disorder

This study investigated the MMPI characteristics of a group of 25 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) histrionic personality disorder patients, contrasted with a mixed group of 57 other personality disorder patients. All patients were diagnosed by means of a semistructured interview (SCID-II; Spitzer, Williams, & Gibbon, 1987). Effects for diagnostic category were found for MMPI Scales 9 (Ma), 0 (Si) and for the HST scale, developed by Morey, Waugh, and Blashfield (1985) for the diagnosis of the histrionic personality disorder. Further analysis of the results revealed that these MMPI scales, and especially the HST scale, mainly assess a social introversion-extraversion dimension, on which histrionic inpatients can be differentiated from nonhistrionic inpatients. This study does not offer direct empirical support for the use of the HST scale as a measurement of the DSM-III-R histrionic personality disorder concept.