Retest Reliability of the Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory

This article reports on two studies which examined the temporal stability of the personality disorder subscales from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI). The scales demonstrated adequate stability in psychiatric inpatients (retested with an average of just over 1 year between testings). Furthermore, a separate sample of depressed inpatients assessed when depressed and 6 weeks later showed that the stability of MCMI personality scales was observed even after patients displayed an initial reduction in depression severity. Although stability is vital to the accurate assessment of personality disorders, both studies also found high retest correlations for the MCMI clinical syndrome subscales. In general, these results suggest that patients displayed similar symptom patterns over time, whether construed as personality traits or characteristic patterns of responding when symptomatic.