The role of personality assessment in forensic driving license renewal procedures. A study supported by the MMPI-2 test.

Abstract: The main function of the medical-psychological assessment to evaluate fitness to drive (FTD) is to safeguard the community against risks posed by drivers who, owing to psycho-physical disease, personality disturbances, abuse of psychotropic substances or drugs, can be a hazard to safety on the roads. In the context of psychodiagnostic investigations, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2 (MMPI-2) test is the gold standard tool supporting clinical assessments conducted to evaluate a subject's capacity to predict her/his own actions, attitudes, risk propensity, level of conformity to social norms. Other important features of the tool include the specific scales aimed at individuating behaviors adopted with the intent to elude or hide existing personality problems. These behaviors are very frequent in the field of medicolegal, psychological and psychiatric assessments, including FTD evaluations. In this study, the MMPI 2 test was administered to 154 subjects for whom Driving Licence (DL) Medical Commissions based in the south of Italy had required specific personality assessments, compared to a control group of 186 subjects with no clinical or psychodiagnostic problems. The question posed in our study was to understand whether the test was able to detect differences between the personalities of the subjects belonging to the two groups. The results obtained demonstrated significant differences between the experimental group and the controls, shown by the MMPI-2 variables, in particular the clinical Hs scale,the supplementary scales: GF, Re, AAS, APS and the content scales DEP and TRT, as well as the PSY-5 Disc and Nege scales.

Occupational exposure to asbestos and urinary bladder cancer.

By the use of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersion spectrometry the amount (mean value mean = 191 +/- 94 fibers/mg of tissue) and the type (chrysotile and tremolite) of asbestos fibers have been determined in tissue samples of four bladder cancer patients affected by pulmonary asbestosis, working in the same plant producing asbestos-cement pipes and boards. Similar measurements were carried out on samples of bladder cancers of eight control patients not professionally exposed to asbestos. Only five of them also revealed chrysotile fibers (mean = 151 +/- 196 fibers/mg of tissue). The paucity of the study and control cases and the small quantitative difference between them regarding the presence of infraneoplastic asbestos fibers does not consent us to hypothesize a causal relationship between tumor and occupational exposure.