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Abstract: Premature termination of therapy by patients is a common phenomenon that can be deleterious to treatment outcome for patients and also negatively affect therapists, treatment centers, and research programs. Therefore, a method of identifying patients at risk for premature termination could have widespread benefits. This study investigated whether patients’ MMPI-2 profiles, including clinical scale elevations and Negative Treatment Indicator (TRT) scores, could predict premature termination in an outpatient sample, controlling for personality disorder diagnosis and symptom severity at intake. Results indicated that while TRT scores were not incrementally predictive of premature termination, the total number of clinical scale elevations was significantly incrementally predictive of dropout. Clinical implications are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Research has shown that high levels of neuroticism (i.e. emotional lability) are related to emotional upset, sensitivity to negative affect, and worry. In addition, previous studies have found conflicting evidence that right frontal hemispheric activation is related to neuroticism/negative affect. Accordingly, this study investigated the relation of neuroticism to variability in frontal asymmetry within college students in the attempt to better understand the relation between frontal asymmetry and neuroticism. As predicted, higher levels of neuroticism were associated with greater mid-frontal asymmetry variability. This finding may explain, in part, why researchers have reported inconsistent results regarding the relation of neuroticism to right frontal activation and provide a novel measure that may be helpful in predicting and identifying related psychopathology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]