Samenvatting

Victims of violent crime who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can request financial compensation from the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). Problematic with this is that PTSD is amenable for malingering. Malingering involves the invention or exaggeration of psychological symptoms or the attribution of such symptoms to wrong causes. If malingered PTSD remains undetected, the VOCF will run the risk of compensating damages which do not exist. The literature suggests that malingering can be detected by focusing on extreme scores on symptom screeners. The results of the current study, however, seem to suggest that this may not be an adequate strategy.