Malingering Traumatic Mental Disorder on the Beck Depression Inventory: Cancerphobia and Toxic Exposure

The revised Beck Depression Inventory is widely used to measure severity of depression, and it is often used in personal injury litigation as evidence of trauma. However, the potential vulnerability of the inventory to malingering has not been assessed. Of a group of 52 untrained volunteers, 96% were able to fake depression on the inventory and 58% successfully faked extremely severe depression. Users are cautioned against treating Beck's inventory as a literal measuring instrument in contexts where manipulation of responses is a potential issue.