Parental alienation · Family court
Parental Alienation Is Not a Recognized Diagnosis. Here's What That Means for Karrie Damm-Stewart's Family Court Work
Parental alienation is not listed in the DSM-5 or the ICD-11. Models built to identify it have not been validated. Families deserve to know that before an assessment is used in court.
What Family Matters of CNY advertises
Family Matters of CNY markets services to families in family court. From its website:
“Families who find themselves in the middle of a family court conflict can rely on our Family Functioning Assessment…”
“Family Reunification Therapy”
“Evaluation to Treatment Planning to Therapeutic Intervention”
“Because difficult family matters require professionals with expertise”
Source: nyfamilymatters.com
Parental alienation is not a recognized diagnosis
- American Psychiatric Association. Parental alienation is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5 (2013) or the DSM-5-TR (2022).
- World Health Organization. In 2020 the WHO removed “parental alienation” from the ICD-11 index. Read more
- United Nations. The 2023 report of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women (A/HRC/53/36) calls parental alienation a “pseudo-concept.” Read more
The Five Factor Model is unvalidated
The Five Factor Model of parental alienation, developed by William Bernet and colleagues, is promoted as a way to identify alienation. Published reliability studies measure whether evaluators agree with each other. They do not show the model is accurate at telling alienation apart from a child’s reaction to abuse or domestic violence.
Critiques in the professional literature describe its claims as unsubstantiated, including “Looking Beyond the Sorting Hat” (Family Transitions, 2023).
Questions to ask any evaluator
- Which diagnostic manual lists the condition you are assessing?
- What validated, peer-reviewed tool did you use?
- What is its published error rate?
- How did you rule out abuse or domestic violence as the reason a child resists contact?
- Who hired you, and who is paying you?