``CHICAGO (AP) — A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era...''
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I took this test in high school. I don't remember much about it except the title MMPI, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It was given as part of a career choice battery through the school counselor's office.
Many of the questions were repetitious. Many asked very strange things as I remember. This thing is really, really boring and long. I remember getting pissed off. I am pretty sure my `hostility' index was notable.
After reading the wiki description, I remember what was pissing me off. They phrase the questions in an annoying way like: `I would rather do X than Y' or, `I prefer A to B' The problem was the real answer was often not either one or the opposition was false. I remember a section that asked questions like, `I urinate frequently'
Here's the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory
What I am thinking now is this isn't such a benign test in the hands of public officials, especially in the current `lockdown' paranoia `pre-crime' mentality of a lot school systems and other public institutions. These are public records that I am sure are considered useful to the police, probation and parole dept, district attorneys, child welfare dept, the criminal courts, juvenile justice, family law, and the like. And then there is the denial of services, especially in the psychiatric and or mental health categories.
There is something just creepy about this test. And that opinion gets stronger the more I think about it. Its uses/abuses for psychological profiling are just as obnoxious as racial profiling. I am thinking about how I don't trust public officials at all anymore. There have been too many lies, to much deception, too much stealing, too many plans and schemes that do damage to the `body' politic, or society at large---that make this a sick society and getting sicker everyday.
There is another aspect that's weird too. The company that owns this test and its inventory profiling systems is highly secretive about its methods, and highly selective about access and uses of their `product'.
Anyway, instead of pursuing that, I would really like to hear what some of the people in either sociology, social psych, or psychology have to say about the MMPI from a professional, clinical, and or academic perspective have to say, and what is useful about it in policy and planning.
CG