Concordance of the MCMI and the MMPI in the diagnosis of three DSM-III Axis I disorders.

This study examines the diagnostic accuracy of the three clinical syndrome scales of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory for a representative psychiatric inpatient population (N = 103). These scales were designed to identify the following DSM-III Axis I disorders: Schizophrenia, major depression, and paranoid disorders. True-positive identification rate was found to be lower than that reported by Millon (1983) for psychotic disorders, despite (in the case of schizophrenia) high prevalence in the sample. A comparison with the MMPI revealed the latter to be more accurate than the MCMI in the identification of schizophrenia and major depression and less accurate in the identification of paranoid disorders. While the MCMI did identify successfully .50 of the paranoid disorders in the sample, the prevalence of these disorders was very low (.02). These findings argue strongly against the use of the MCMI as an alternative to the MMPI in inpatient psychiatric settings.