A-300 Differences in MMPI-2 scores for Individuals with and without Acquired Brain Injuries

Abstract Objective: To compare personality features as measured by the MMPI-2 for individuals with and without acquired brain injuries. Methods: Participants were selected from a de-identified clinical database. Thirty-seven (Mage=41.07, Medu=13.05, 59.5% white, and 61.9% male) individuals were identified as having an acquired brain injury and 377 (Mage=32.69, Medu=13.71, 50.2% white, and 56.7% female) did not but had other diagnosis. Significant differences between groups existed for age, education, and gender. An ANCOVA was utilized to test the difference in endorsement of symptoms between individual with and without acquired brain injuries controlling for the significant covariates. Results: Of the ten clinical scales on the MMPI-2, only hypomania (Scale 9) was significantly different between the two groups F(1,412)=7.074, p=.008 with the group with the acquired brain injuries endorsing more hypomanic symptoms than the non-acquired brain injury group. Conclusions: The non-acquired brain injury group fell within the normal range while the individuals in the acquired brain injury group experienced moderate elevation of hypomania. This suggest that individuals in the acquired brain injury group may find themselves experiencing restrictions, agitation, and dissatisfaction on their activity level secondary to the brain injury. Implications for these findings suggest that individuals with acquired brain injuries may benefit from some form of acceptance therapy following the injury as well as continued monitoring of symptoms. Limitation to this study include lack of specificity to the type, timing since incident, and location of the acquired brain injury; limited number of individuals with acquired brain injuries; and lack of diversity within the sample.