The topic of the 47th Annual Association of Family and Conciliation Court
Conference is "parental alienation." Over 1,000 lawyers, judges,
mediators, and mental health professionals (psychologists, therapists,
counselors, and court personnel) have converged in Denver for plenaries
and dozens of educational and training sessions to share wisdom and views
not just about alienating parents, but also concerning many other topics
including mediating high conflict partner breakups, understanding how
the brain works in conflict and why people behave irrationally and reactively,
the effects of parental conflict upon children, children's best interests
and parenting plans, domestic violence, and much more.
This is reportedly the largest AFCC Conference turn out ever.
The AFCC a is multi-disciplinary and highly collaborative organization,
made up of members of overlapping professions who are passionately cross-pollinating
the international social landscape - but particularly within the U.S.
AFCC is dedicated to facilitating the healthy resolution of family conflict.
AFCC is probably the most important organization affecting family law
trends today both in and outside the courtroom.
The concept of "parental alienation" is a highly controversial
subject. There is much debate and disagreement nationally and in Denver
this week whether parental alienation is really a "syndrome"
or "disorder" and whether it deserves its own category in the
upcoming DSM-V.
The DSM is short for the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
It is published is by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The
current DSM-IV was first released in 1994 and has since been updated.
It appears that the DSM-V may be released as early as 2012.
Mental Health Professionals (MHP's) use this manual when working with
patients as a common ground for better understanding their illness and
potential treatment, to communicate between themselves, and to help insurance
companies and other payors decide whether to cover treatments. It is considered
the ‘bible’ for any professional who makes psychiatric diagnoses
in the United States and many other countries, and hence what gets in
and what does not has long ranging consequences about how MHP's and
judges and lawyers view certain behaviors and functioning. In effect it
constitutes a consensus over what is and what is not a 'mental illness.'
Hence, the DSM has important consequences to families who find themselves
within the Family Court systems, even though that is not what the manual
is necessarily intended to be used for. The parental alienation question
in this context is essentially whether there are predictable and discrete
behaviors that, in combination and given certain levels of intensity,
can form an identifiable mental illness that can be credibly diagnosed
and distinguished from other disorders, and then treated.
Whether parental alienation is deserving of its own category within the
DSM is an important debate. In forensic parenting evaluations the DSM-IV
may be used to label parents in ways that can seriously impact and impede
their parenting rights. Therapists, psychologists, social workers and
others who must rely upon its system of coding often provide diagnoses
and recommendations to judges and other MHP's that are used to establish
parenting rights and parenting plans in custody disputes and move-away
situations.
I will attempt to Blog some information about current parental alienation
research soon. In the meantime, consistent with my goal of providing educational
materials to individuals who are investigating legal questions involving
families, my hope here is to introduce these important concepts. Given
the nature of Blogs it is easiest to do this in 'layers.'
Thurman Arnold