Borderline, depressive, and schizophrenic discrimination by MMPI.

This study intended to differentiate among borderline personality disorder (BPD), schizophrenic, and depressed patients on the basis of their MMPI profiles. MMPI profiles of 237 psychiatric inpatients were selected on the basis of their primary DSM-III admission diagnoses. Analysis of MMPI mean scores and discriminant function analysis supports previous literature in describing borderline patients as having a broad spectrum of psychopathology typified by an attitude of alienation and rebelliousness, atypical thought content and/or process, and eccentric behavior. Schizophrenic patients are differentiated from BPD patients by the presence of thought disorder and psychotic-like manifestations. The depressed patients did not show the aforementioned extreme characteristics of the other two groups.