FEIGNING PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN TEMPORARY DISABILITY: FORENSIC UTILITY OF THE SCL-90-R

Feigning in temporary disabilities (TD) assessment should be controlled because of the secondary gains that could motivate the feigning of psychopathology. The general objective of this study was to determine the utility of the SCL-90-R for TD assessments by psychological causes. For this, 50 workers answered the SCL-90-R under feigning instructions. The results showed that feigning sample obtained higher significant scores in all dimensions and global indexes of distress, contrasting to non-clinical general population. Similar results were obtained with clinical population, with the exception of PSDI index which has not shown differences. The case study evidenced that all but one participants feigned specific clinical case scores in the SCL-90-R, furthermore the participants were classified as clinical cases simultaneously in several symptomatic dimensions. Thus, with the aim to feign successfully the participants used the strategies of severity of symptoms and indiscriminate symptom endorsement. Finally, regarding feigning detection it was obtained that 95.9% of the successful feigners were correctly detected by at least one global index, 93.9% were detected as feigners by two or more indexes simultaneously, and the sensitivity of the GSI and PST was 91.8% in feigning detection. Finally, practical implications of these results are discussed.