The association between clinicians' initial judgments of feigning and outcomes on symptom validity measures among pretrial forensic psychiatric inpatients.

Research suggests the use of validated symptom validity tests to detect feigning is imperative to increase accuracy over unaided clinical judgment, especially in forensic settings. This study examined performance on the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms (M-FAST) and Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS) during 297 assessments of forensic inpatients. The risk of being identified as feigning on the M-FAST or SIRS was similar for those who were referred for evaluation of feigning compared to those who were not, but individuals with malingering designations prior to the evaluation scored significantly higher than those without on the M-FAST and several SIRS subscales.

Therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome in the outpatient treatment of urban adolescents: The role of callous-unemotional traits.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits designate a unique subset of youth with externalizing psychopathology who have a severe pattern of aggressive behavior and tend to have worse outcomes in treatment. However, little research has addressed how CU traits relate to different components of psychotherapy, such as the therapeutic alliance. The current study examined the role of CU traits in predicting therapeutic alliance in 59 adolescents (M age = 15.