Abstract
The cry for help is a contentious attribution to give to the motivation for symptom exaggeration or negative response bias in results that do not reach the bar for malingering on symptom validity tests in psychological injury forensic and related disability assessments. Young (Psychological Injury and Law, 12(3–4), 225–237, 2019) had argued that the cry for help is a valid interpretive option in these circumstances, given that it refers to a call for attention for the most part. This paper advocates for replacing the term cry for help with a less contested one—a call for aid. This replacement term has multiple advantages relative to the term of a cry for help, which are elucidated. The evaluee might be experiencing litigation distress, for example, and feel that aid is required and behave in ways, either overtly or covertly, that call for the aid. The term cry for help is not actively researched, with only two relevant publications including the term since the 2019 article in question was published. Here, we examine those papers, and reflect on the implications for test/scale result interpretations involving psychological injury assessments. Also, through those articles, we propose mechanisms that might be at work in expressing the call for aid. Recommendations relate to undertaking a comprehensive research program on the call for aid in the types of assessments to which it might apply as a possible explanation of symptom validity test (SVT) and performance validity test (PVT) testing results. To facilitate research on the question, the article provides a table of 25 possible explanations for SVT/PVT results in forensic disability and related assessments that implicate exaggerated symptoms.