An examination of the clinical validity of the MCMI-III depressive personality scale

We examined the redundancy and incremental validity of the newly introduced Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III) Depressive Personality scale with a heterogenous sample of 283 psychiatric inpatients. Linear and nominal bivariate correlations indicated sizable overlap between the MCMI-III Depressive, Avoidant, and Self-Defeating Personality scales. Also, the Depressive Personality scale showed moderate overlap with the MCMI-III Major Depression scale. Despite this redundancy. the Depressive Personality scale made significant independent contributions in predicting Axis-I measures of depression, i.e., the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) Depression and Interpersonal Sensitivity scales. as well as the MCMI-III Major Depression scale. The Depressive Personality scale appears to be dimensionally related to these measures of Axis-I depression. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.