The Prevalence of Personality Disorder Among Wife Assaulters

We investigated personality disorder (PD) in court- and self-referred wife assaulters using the Millón Clinical Multiaxial In-ventory-II (MCMI-II-Millon, 1987) and the Personality Disorder Examination (PDE —Loranger, 1988). MCMI-II results indicated that 80% to 90% of men suffered from PD; the prevalence of individual PDs was similar among court- and self-referred men. According to the PDE, the prevalence of PD was considerably lower (50%), although still high in absolute terms. The disorders diagnosed most frequently by both methods were sadistic, antisocial, and borderline personality. The diagnostic agreement between the MCMI-II and the PDE was modest; concurrent correlations between dimensional scores on the two measures were also modest. Analysis of the MCMI-II response style scales indicated that self-referred men were more likely to admit pathology and to be self-critical; this phenomenon appeared to result from court-referred men with antisocial personality traits denying or minimizing pathology. These results indicate that PD is prevalent in wife assaulters; however, self-reports such as the MCMI-II may overdiagnose PD, at least when the criterion is established using interview-based methods.