Personality disorders and regulative styles of patients with temporo-mandibular joint pain dysfunction syndrome.

A sample of 42 women patients with Temporo-mandibular Joint Pain Dysfunction Syndrome was given the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II and the Serial Color-Word Test. Compared with sex- and age-matched nonclinical controls, temporo-mandibular patients had significantly (1) higher scores on the Obsessive-Compulsive scale, (2) lower scores of ITa (a pattern concerned with initial times of response), and (3) higher scores of R (linear increase in reading times during the trials). The latter intergroup difference concerned mainly the first subtest, i.e., temporo-mandibular patients were characterized by higher scores of R from the very beginning of the process of adaptation.