Psychological Injury and Law
Volume 10, Issue 4, 2017, Pages 358-367

Standard Symptom Inventories for Asylum Seekers in a Psychiatric Hospital: Limited Utility Due to Poor Symptom Validity (Article)

van der Heide D.* , Boskovic I. , Merckelbach H.
  • a Phoenix, ProPersona, Wolfheze, Netherlands, GGZ Centraal, PO Box 1000, Ermelo, 3850 BA, Netherlands
  • b Forensic Psychology Section, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom
  • c Forensic Psychology Section, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

Abstract

We examined symptom validity in two samples (Ns = 27 and 35) of asylum seekers who had been admitted to a psychiatric facility. Considerable proportions over-endorsed atypical symptoms (63 and 83%, respectively) and underperformed on a simple forced-choice task requiring the identification of basic emotions (41 and 71%, respectively). Over-endorsement and underperformance were unrelated to Dutch language proficiency but were related to raised scores on standard symptom inventories commonly used to assess psychiatric symptoms of asylum seekers. This pattern of findings casts doubts on attempts to monitor symptom severity and treatment progress in psychiatric asylum seekers without taking symptom validity into account. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Author Keywords

Asylum seekers Refugees Underperformance Symptom validity tests Symptom over-reporting

Index Keywords

[No Keywords available]
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85032344405&doi=10.1007%2fs12207-017-9302-x&partnerID=40&md5=299baac9ac730d5658666bb620f7b585
DOI: 10.1007/s12207-017-9302-x
ISSN: 1938971X
Cited by: 3
Original Language: English