"In cases of contested custody and access, mental health professionals have been seeing with increasing frequency an extreme form of brainwashing which has been called The Parental Alienation Syndrome. Children who are suffering with this situation have been subjected to an intense and persistent form of brainwashing by one parent against the other. The overt goal is almost always - at a minimum - to dramatically reduce contact by the child with that other parent. Commonly, the goal becomes to virtually eliminate the other parent from the child's life."
Sad, that one human being would sink so low as to try to turn a child against the other."
I'm interested where that came from. With the mention of custody the States perhaps? In the UK the terms "custody" and "access" were replaced by "residence" and "contact" by the Children Act 1989.
The UK courts have long recognised that some parents will use children as a weapon to get at the other parent and it isn't at all uncommon for a parent to be hostile to contact when they arrive in court. However, despite the proliferation of definitions and descriptions of PAS there is little in the way of scientific data and as a mental health condition it remains unproven and is likely to remain so (I challenge anyone to find scientific data!). Because of this it is difficult to find an expert witness in the UK who will support the theory and courts don't recognise PAS.
Although it doesn't mention PAS by name this is the advice given to psychiatrists recently;
"The expert should not take instructions that go beyond psychiatric expertise, for example in providing opinions as to whether an individual is telling the truth. Care should be taken when the issue is one of novel psychiatric conditions for which there is an uncertain evidence base or a condition, such as ?battered woman syndrome?, ?false memory
syndrome?, ?Stockholm syndrome? or ?sick building syndrome?, that may be recognised by the courts but for which there are no recognised diagnostic criteria, or no general agreement to the syndrome?s nature,
or even no agreement as to its existence."
NHS Evidence has a handful of papers about PAS, but most of them are definitions and descriptions from the States and there little, if anything, in the way of scientific data that one would expect for a mental health condition to be recognised. To my knowledge there is only one mental health professional who supports PAS theory in the UK and he has been described as being at "the lower end of his profession" by the courts. Presumably this was after he was found to have brought his profession into disrepute at a disciplinary hearing after using diagnostic tools not recognised by the profession (not related to PAS).
Although a degree of hostility to contact isn't uncommon in cases presenting to court the reasons for this vary widely. Some parents will have well founded safety fears
because of domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, or child maltreatment. For
others the hostility reflects hurt and anger at the breakdown of the relationship,
disputes over property and money or a desire to create a new family unit and cut out
the biological parent. In most cases the court process, if not necessarily in
dealing with the cause of the parent?s hostility and therefore changing their
attitudes, at least overcomes their initial resistance so that contact can take place.
Sometimes hostility is more entrenched and 'implacable' despite the prolonged involvement of the courts. In a few cases mental health experts have found the hostile parent to have a recognisable personality disorder but that is far removed from some of the claims made about PAS.
Apologies for the long post.