Amir Garakani, MD, associate professor of psychiatry; and Frank Buono, PhD, associate research scientist in psychiatry, have been awarded a grant from the AAPL Institute for Education and Research for the study, “Validation of the Miller FAST (M-FAST) in Psychiatric Patients Within the Emergency Department.”
The purpose of this study is to validate the M-FAST for malingering in patients seen by the psychiatry service in the emergency department at a small community hospital serving a racially and socioeconomically diverse population.
The M-FAST will be administered to all patients who are called upon to be seen by the Psychiatry service in the emergency department. The goal is to determine the accuracy of the physician’s assessment and screen for potential biases in the provider. Additionally, the study will be able to provide a correlations and the relationship between rate for malingering to suicidality and depression. Additionally, the study will be able to provide a prevalence rate for malingering to compare to previous studies of ED patients.
The amount of the grant is $24,582.