Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, By Denis William Keyes

MENTAL RETARDATION

VOLUME

42,

NUMBER

2: 151–153

APRIL

2004

Use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to Identify Malingering Mental Retardation
Denis William Keyes

Since 1988, I have been active in cases involving the death penalty and offenders with mental retardation. Because of serious concerns about these individuals, and from several experiences in this arena, I have written and coauthored articles on mental retardation and criminal justice, most of which deal with cases of Death Row inmates who have mental retardation. One of these articles (Keyes, Edwards, & Perske, 1997) was subsequently cited by the United States Supreme Court in the Atkins v. Virginia case (2002). No matter one’s opinion about the death
Although I am not specifically criticizing the use of this instrument in the general population, Mississippi’s Supreme Court is making a fundamental error. Had any of these justices or their staff taken the time to consult with any professional experienced in the assessment of people with mental retardation, they could have learned about this test and avoided making a very serious judicial error. The problem arising from these decisions cannot be overstated. First, according to the first paragraph of the introduction in the MMPI-2 manual, this measure is a broad-band test designed to a number of the major patterns of personality and emotional disorders. In the manual Hathaway and McKinley (1989) noted that ‘‘An eighth-grade elementary-school level of reading comprehension is required, as is a satisfactory degree of cooperation and commitment to the task of completing the inventory’’ (p. 1). Here lies the first of the problems with the Mississippi Court’s ruling: People with mental retardation almost never achieve a reading comprehension level (or an oral language comprehension level, for that matter) of that expected of a typical eighth grader. Given this fact, the MMPI-2 is already inappropriate for people with mental retardation; therefore, using it as a method of helping to diagnose the existence of mental retardation is ludicrous.
Virginia. Paper presented at the 111th annual conference of the American Psychological Association. Toronto, Ontario. Butcher, J., Dahlstrom, W., Graham, J., Tellegen, A., & Kaemmer, B. (1989). Manual for administration and scoring: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ellis, J. (2003). Mental retardation and the death penalty: A guide to state legislative issues. Available at www.aamr.org. Fairchild v. Lockhart, 744 F. Supp. 1429 [ED. Ark. 1989] Foster v. State, 848 So.2d 172 [Miss. 2003] Goddin v. State, 2003 WL 21805386 [Miss. Aug 7, 2003] Hathaway, S., & McKinley, J. C. (1989). Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice-Hall. Keyes, D., Edwards, W., & Perske, R. (1997). People with mental retardation are dying—Legally. Mental Retardation, 35,