Utility of the minnesota multiphasic personality inventory personality disorder scales with adolescent psychiatric inpatients

Personality disorders play an important role in the treatment of many adult psychiatric disorders. Current research has begun to examine the role of personality disorders in adolescent psychopathology. Unfortunately, there is limited research available to document the reliability and validity of personality disorder assessment measures for use with adolescent psychiatric patients. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Personality Disorder Scales have shown adequate psychometric properties with adult samples, but have not been tested using adolescents. The present study was designed to examine the utility of the MMPI Personality Disorder Scales with 217 adolescent psychiatric inpatients. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed males scored significantly higher than females on the schizoid, narcissistic, and antisocial scales, a pattern that has been found in adult psychiatric patients. Also, the MMPI Personality Disorder Scales correlated in patterns consistent with research on adult samples. In addition, the MMPI Personality Disorder Scales were meaningfully correlated with the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. However, factor analysis revealed a different factor structure than that found with adults. The similarities between adolescent and adult data suggest that the assessment of personality disorders in adolescents may provide useful clinical information on the development of personality disorders.This article was presented at the American Psychological Association Convention, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, August 1993. The research was funded in part by a grant from the Charles Reiley Armington Foundation for Values in Children.Received M.A. from Case Western Reserve University. Her major research interests are in the areas of depression and personality disorders.Received Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Ohio State University in 1986. Completed his predoctoral internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the Brown University Program in Medicine, Providence, Rhode Island. Actively involved in research on risk factors for suicide in adolescents and adults. Has published empirical studies, theoretical papers, and treatment guidelines related to suicide and its risk factors.Received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. His major research interests include depression, suicide, adolescence, and family systems issues.     

Rights and Resources—Libertarians and the Right to Life

The author addresses Robert Nozick's claim that: “The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition.” Hence Nozick insists that rights are violated if citizens are compelled to contribute to others' welfare, however urgent their needs may be. The author argues that it is characteristic of libertarian theories that they invoke the moral sanctity of private property against welfarist or egalitarian conceptions of social justice. Nozick's version of the libertarian critique has three conceptual pillars–“right,”“thing” and “space.” On that basis Nozick claims that talk of welfare “rights” can be condemned on the plane of rights. This is true, Nozick maintains, even of “the right to life.” The author contends that this argument fails. It equivocates over the idea of “rights”; and it misconceives crucial features of property. Nozick deploys exclusive “domain rights,” whilst attacking “important‐interest rights.” His historical‐entitlement theory fails as a justification of private property. The author argues that, so far as material objects are concerned, private property institutions depend upon trespassory rules which do not impose morally binding obligations unless basic needs are catered for. Furthermore, private property institutions also comprise monetary resources to which the spatial metaphor of exclusive rights does not apply. Holdings vested in any particular person at any particular time are stamped, morally, with a mix of contestable and mutable property‐specific justice reasons. Hence it is fallacious to suppose that ownership rights together exhaust all normative space over “things.” The major objection to speaking of everyone's having a right to various things such as equality of opportunity, life, and so on, and enforcing this right, is that these “rights” require a substructure of things and materials and actions; and other people may have rights and entitlements over these. [≡] The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition. (Nozick 1974, 238)     

Decentralisation and NGO–municipal government collaboration in Ecuador

Decentralisation, or the transfer of decision-making power and funds from central to local governments, is one of the most important reform movements in Latin America. Recent constitutional changes in Ecuador have contributed to the democratisation and empowerment of municipal governments. Case studies of three municipalities in highland Ecuador examine new opportunities for NGO–municipal government collaboration. NGOs have considerable experience of working locally and can help municipalities with planning and capacity building. Municipalities offer NGOs the legitimacy and local accountability they may lack, as well as the means both to extend project activities beyond isolated communities and to maintain the results once NGO assistance ends.