Identification of Suicidal Episodes with the MMPI

Abstract

Previous research has not identified MMPI scales, patterns or item sets capable of separating eventual suicide committers from non-committers. Looking for MMPI scales associated with a short-term suicide state, we compared the scores of people who had committed suicide soon after taking the inventory with those of people who killed themselves more than three months later. The Suicide Episode group showed a significantly higher mean score than the Remote Suicide sample on Paranoia, and near-significant differences appeared on six other scales. These results suggest that it may be possible to identify a suicide state with the MMPI, but further research should precede clinical application of these findings.