The nature of the BHI printout facilitates the 'clinical cross validation' of an individual profile. It should be remembered though that while there are certain general psychological reactions to an illness or injury (such as grief over a loss of heath), the patient's medical diagnosis should be taken into consideration when interpreting the BHI results.

Over the course of the BHI's development, it was administered to persons with a variety of medical conditions, including heart disease and diabetes, and was constructed with such persons in mind. The BHI can also be used to assess medical patients with illness, rather than injury. For more information about this, consult the page on The Interpretation of Double-Normed Tests. Obviously, an understanding of how to interpret tests such as this is very important. On the other hand, comparing a persons scores to other medical patients enables one to determine if a particular person is reacting differently than does most medical patients. Overall, a comparison to persons in the community is especially useful if one is trying to estimate how a person has been impacted by a medical condition. This makes a more sophisticated analysis possible.

As a result, it produces two sets of scores for each person. This means that the patient's responses can be compared to the average rehabilitation patient, as well as to the average person in the community. Like the P3, the BHI is unusual in that it is 'double normed', meaning that each person's responses produces two sets of scores. The strength of the BHI is that it is able to control for a number of factors which can confound other psychological tests not designed for medical patients. Psychological tests which were initially intended to assess the presence of psychological disorders in medically healthy people can produce scores which are confounded by the patient's medical diagnosis. The constructs of the test itself were developed in a health psychology setting, and the test was researched and normed using medical patients. The BHI was designed to be a psychological test for medical patients. Psychological Tests for Persons with Medical Disorders Psychological Testing and Health Psychology

Strengths and weaknesses of the mmpi 2