A Study on Ego Defense Mechanisms of the Forensic Schizophrenia Group by Ewha Diagnostic Test of Diagnostic Mechanism(EDMT)

Young Sook Park

Copyright ⓒ 1994. Ewha Womans University School of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Dec 31, 1994

Abstract

The present study was conducted to evaluate ego defense mecahnisms of 78 forensic schizophrenia patients selected on the basis DSM-III-R criteria who were admitted to the Forensic Psychiatric Institution from March to June of 1992. 47 Normal controls were matched for sex, age and education level with the forensic schizophrenia partients. EDMT(Ewha Diagnostic Test of Diagnostic Mechanism), consisted of 200 items and 20 scales, was administered to the subject group and the normal control group. No significant differnce was found between the two groups in sex ratio, age and educational level.

Results of the present study were as follows:

1) The forensic schizophrenia group presented a statistically significant higher score on denial, supression, rationalization and anticipation scales than normal control group.

2) The normal group gave had a higher score on denial and anticipation scales than the normal control group.

3) The male patient group had a higher score on denial and anticipation scales than the normal control group.

4) On the basis of the factor analysis, the forensic schizophrenia group had a higher score on behavior inhibted scales and the normal group on the self-expansive scale.

5) It was suggested that the forensic schizophrenia group had the overcontorlled personality trait and more severe ego distubance.