A heroin addiction scale for the MMPI: effectiveness in differential diagnosis in a psychiatric setting.

This study examined the discriminative utility of the Cavior Heroin Addiction Scale (HE) in separating samples of male heroin addict, alcoholic, and polydrug abuser samples from psychiatric control samples matched on sex, age, race, and education level. Heroin addicts were the only substance abuser samples that did not differentiate from its control sample. Heroin addicts obtained higher mean HE values than did the alcoholics although the polydrug abusers obtained higher mean HE values than both alcoholics and heroin addicts.

Effects of scoring norms on adolescent psychiatric drug users' and nonusers' MMPI profiles.

The present study compared the effects of scoring norms on adolescent psychiatric inpatient drug users' and nonusers' MMPI profiles. The results indicated that regardless of drug usage or nonusage the application of adolescent norms yielded less pathological profiles than did the use of adult norms. A further finding was that Scale O, Social Introversion, is the only clinical scale from differentiated users' from nonusers' profiles.

The MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale as a general measure of substance misuse.

On the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale alcoholics, heroin addicts and polydrug users obtained similar scores which were significantly higher than those of matched control groups of psychiatric patients.