Psychological injury in intimate partner violence cases: A contrastive analysis of forensic measures

With the aim of comparing in the forensic assessment of the psychosocial injury in intimate partner violence cases, the efficacy of the psychometric measure with the content analysis of the clinical interview, a study was designed. For this, forensic assessment not only must provide a diagnostic of the psychological injury, but also a differential diagnosis of malingering. 101 mentally healthy and with no-history of intimate partner violence (IPV) females answered, under malingering instructions of psychological injury consequence of IPV, to the MMPI-2, and were submitted to a free narrative interview, the forensic-clinical interview (Arce a Farina, 2001). The results showed that participants had a very high capacity, 79.6%, to malinger in the psychometric measure, the MMPI-2. As for the differential diagnosis of malingering, the validity scales and configurations classified correctly as malingerers to the 80.2% of the protocols, failing in the remaining 19.8%. As in forensic assessment, the Type II Error (classification of malingered injury as real) is not admissible; the psychometric measure is not sufficient evidence of psychological injury. The content analysis of the forensic-clinical interview revealed that 3% of the participants were capable to malinger the psychological injure, while in 97% were detected non-normative narratives, that is, were classified as false. Although the content analysis of the interview makes malingering significantly more difficult and detects more malingering than the psychometric measure, fails to comply with full control of the Type II Error. Thus, the content analysis of the clinical-forensic interview is not in itself sufficient forensic evidence. The implications of the results for forensic practice are discussed. (C) 2014 Sociedad Universitaria de InvestigaciOn en Psicologia y Salud. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U.