MACI Personality Scale Profiles of Depressed Adolescent Suicide Attempters: A Pilot Study

Employing the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI), we examined differences in the maladaptive personality style profiles of clinically referred, depressed adolescents presenting with (n = 26) and without (n = 23) a history of previous suicide attempts. Relative to the comparison group, adolescent attempters experienced more severe overall levels of personality dysfunction. At the trait level, attempters obtained higher scores on the forceful and borderline tendency scales and lower scores on the submissive and conforming scales of the MACI, reflecting negative mood regulation deficits (e.g., anger control problems) and persistently high levels of aggressive impulsivity. These preliminary findings suggest that MACI personality scales may be useful in discriminating adolescents with and without previous suicidal behavior, especially among depressed outpatient samples [C] 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 56: 1381-1385, 2000. Keywords: suicide; depression; adolescent; personality disorder; risk assessment