Assessing for Personality Disorders in the Hispanic Client

Abstract

The worldview of nondominant culture members influences behaviors that are then understood and interpreted by dominant culture members including clinicians. The risks of insensitive or biased assessment for personality disorders (PDs) include the risk of inaccurate diagnostic decisions that overstate apparent deviance, as well as missing important clinical information that might direct effective intervention, placement, or hiring and employment decisions. PD assessment may occur in a number of settings, such as hospitals, outpatient settings, forensic settings, criminal court, and family court, resulting in variations in the quality and amount of information available for the task and the critical nature of decision-making. Each of these contexts provides a different level of information and referral question. In other words, assessment settings and contexts will differ with respect to the nature and purpose of assessment, which may further complicate cross-cultural issues in the assessment process. This chapter therefore provides an overview of relevant demographic and important sociocultural information for Latino/a Americans in the context of personality disorder assessment and present a discussion of the range of clinical tools and strategies used to assess and diagnose PDs, as well as recommendations for assessing Latino/as. This chapter reviews specific psychological tests and interview schedules and discuss their potential utility in personality disorder assessment among Latino/a clients. The following measures are reviewed: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPl-2), Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI), and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory- Ill (MCMl-lll). The following interview schedules are also reviewed: Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP) and Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) as examples of additional tools to consider with Latino/as. Although interview schedules such as the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SCID-II; First) are used frequently in the assessment of PDs in clinical and research settings, their use with Latino/as has been understudied. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)