Parental Alienation Syndrome, Fact or Fiction?

[parentalalienation]

The entire article is posted at www.helpstoppas.com.

Many people say that this disorder is a court room ploy by father's rights and non-custodial parents. However, there have been over 300 peer review articles on the subject, and the American Psychological Association has included PAS information in the custody evaluation proceedings handbook. PAS will be on the list of possible new disorders to be included in the next DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel for Mental Disorders), the "bible" of the psychological community. Imagine the changes that will bring about.

Is it a good thing, or a disaster waiting to happen?

Boy Made Into Cause By Group www.helpstoppas.com
Advocates say father's death a case of alienation syndrome
By ANDREW TILGHMAN
PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME

Although it has not been accepted as a true disorder, many parents and other advocates say Parental Alienation Syndrome can be caused by actions such as:

• Taking a side: Asking a child to choose one parent over the other.
• Passing the blame: Telling a child that the other parent is responsible for financial problems.
• Collecting tidbits: Using a child to spy on or covertly gather information about the other parent.
• Causing a split: Cultivating secrets, special signals or words with special meanings designed to alienate the other parent.
Source: Douglas Darnall, Ph.D, author of Divorce Casualties

A 10-year-old child accused of fatally shooting his father this summer has become a national poster boy for a controversial and unofficial psychiatric disorder: Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Parents and others seeking formal recognition of the so-called syndrome have latched onto the death of 41-year-old Rick Lohstroh, who was killed on Aug. 27 outside his ex-wife's Katy home. After a bitter divorce in 2003, Lohstroh was picking up his two sons for a visit under a joint-custody agreement when the 10-year-old shot him from the back seat of the car, police said.

Since then, advocates have pointed to Lohstroh's death to illustrate that acrimonious divorces can prompt an angry parent to turn a child against another parent. "He's become a martyr for Parental Alienation Syndrome," said Dr. William Narrow, who heads the American Psychiatric Association's research and classification division, which determines whether disorders are formally recognized as legitimate mental illnesses. Parents and others have flooded Narrow's office with e-mails in recent weeks, urging the APA to include Parental Alienation Syndrome in its diagnostic manual, Narrow said.


Concern of fathers' group
While the syndrome has been cited in many divorce cases and custody battles across the country, Lohstroh's case is the first in which advocates suggest that PAS led to a death. The emotional harm that embittered parents can inflict on a child is a long-standing concern for fathers' rights groups, which frequently complain that family courts unfairly favor women in cases of divorce, custody disputes and child-support litigation.

"What happens in these PAS cases is so cruel and demented," said Glenn Sacks, the host of a nationally syndicated radio show called His Side, which focuses on fathers' issues. Lohstroh was the topic of one of Sacks' shows in November.

[sendero]

1. While it is undeniable...

.. (in the state of Texas anyway) that fathers basically have almost no rights in a divorce situation, it is the parents' duty to shield their children from any open hostility by one partner to the other.

Some people are not able to do that, and that is really sad. It is tough enough on the kids to have to deal with their parents splitting up, grown people ought to be able to hide their acrimony from the kids.

[K-W]

2. Of course children can and are alienated from parents.

It would be surprising if they werent.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. It works both ways

Remember the case a few years ago (it was subsequently used as the basis for a Law and Order episode) in which a non-custodial father had disappeared with his two pre-school daughters when they were very small and had taken on a new identity?

When their mother tracked down their location, they were in their late teens, early twenties, and they refused even to meet her.

You would have thought that under normal circumstances, they would at least have been curious.

[Fridays Child]

4. I'm personally acquainted with two cases...

In the first case, the children--now, adults--were induced to falsely accuse their mother of sexual abuse. One child has since reunited with her but he is extremely psychologically damaged by the circumstances surrounding their separation, as well as the many years he endured in the thrall of a Christian fundy father and stepmother who regularly lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want. The other child, a daughter, has yet to reunite with her mother. Very sad.

In the second case, three children are at risk of PAS, again, at the hands of their father, who uses them in his campaign of revenge against their mother because she had the temerity to walk away from his physical and verbal abuse of her.

This has always been framed as a fathers' rights issue, and that's where I see the red herring. It's a children's rights issue, and fathers are, at least, equally represented among the perpetrators.