Parental alienation: Psychological distress and mental health Male Psychology Conference 24 th June 2017 Dr Sue Whitcombe, Chartered Psychologist, AFPBsS HCPC registered counselling psychologist
Overview • Mental Health and ACEs • Parental alienation • a child welfare issue, prevalence and outcomes • key signs, symptoms, behaviours • contributory factors • Evidence from practise • Parental alienation in the UK
Mental health and ACEs • Mental health problems are one of the main causes of the overall disease burden worldwide • 10% of children and young people (aged 5-16 years) have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem • 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health problems have not had appropriate early intervention • 50% of mental health problems are established by age 14 and 75% by age 24
Mental health and ACEs • Adverse Childhood Experiences include experiencing all types of abuse; living in a home where there is parental conflict, domestic violence, alcohol or drug abuse; parental separation • Number of ACEs strongly associated with adult high-risk health behaviours - smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity and severe obesity, and correlated with ill-health including depression, heart disease, cancer and shortened lifespan • ACE score above six is associated with a 30-fold increase in attempted suicide
What is parental alienation? • Implacable hostility • Hostile Aggressive Parenting (HAP) • Intractable contact dispute • Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) • Resist/refuse dynamic • Pathogenic parenting • Attachment Based-Parental Alienation (AB-PA)
What is parental alienation? Unjustified or unwarranted rejection of a parent where there was previously a normal range, loving, good enough relationship Intentional or unintentional actions by a parent (usually PWC) to turn their child against the other parent (usually a NRP)
What is parental alienation? Family system under stress: the child feels a loyalty conflict, unwittingly co-opted into an unhealthy cross-generational coalition with one parent, or empowered or elevated to the role of decision maker in perverse triangulation, parentification or adultification processes
What is parental alienation? Over time, the child becomes hostile, vitriolic and abusive, before usually rejecting the parent and refusing contact
What is parental alienation? Rejecting a parent • Children are wired to attach to their parents and caregivers – even if they are neglectful or abusive • Children who have experienced neglect or abuse still crave a relationship with their parent or caregiver • It is unusual for a child, particularly a pre-adolescent, to actively reject a parent or caregiver • Rejection is a sign of underlying psychological distress, most likely a sign of alienation
What is parental alienation? Defence mechanism: • Children unable to deal with hostility and conflict between parents, experience cognitive dissonance and psychological distress • Feel forced (usually unconsciously) to choose between parents, minimise distress by rejecting the least vulnerable or least fearsome parent • Splitting defence - one parent is all good, and the other is all bad, unable to manage the reality that there is good and bad in both
What is parental alienation? Child Psychological Abuse 995.51 “ nonaccidental verbal or symbolic acts by a child’s parent or caregiver that result, or have the potential to result, in significant psychological harm to the child. Examples include […] harming/abandoning – or indicating that the offender will harm/abandon – people or things that the child cares about ”
What is parental alienation? • Parental alienation is not a child arrangements issue • Parental alienation is a child welfare issue • Alienated children experience ACEs – parental conflict, parental separation, exposure to DV, emotional and psychological abuse • Parental alienation results in psychological distress and emotional harm
Parental alienation - outcomes Short-term children may appear to function reasonably well in their day to day lives. However: • There can be a restricted number of personal relationships and friendships • Cognitive functioning can be impaired – reality testing, critical evaluation and black and white thinking • Suppressed and repressed memories, feelings and experiences can lead to anxiety, anger, aggression, social withdrawal
Parental alienation - outcomes Life-long effects include depression, substance abuse, damaged self-esteem, personality and identity issues, enduring relationship issues (Baker, 2005; Ben Ami & Baker, 2012; Bernet, Baker & Verrocchio, 2015 ) Later recognition that they excluded a loving, caring parent from their life may cause irreversible damage to relationship with the alienating parent
Parental alienation - prevalence • Data variable- issues with samples and definitions • 10-15% in community samples 20-40% in high conflict samples • Most common in high conflict separated families though does occur in intact families • Gender of children not significant • (N =610) randomly selected population of adults in USA. 13.4% of parents have been alienated from one or more of their children; much higher than previous estimates. Findings show evidence of parental alienation across all socio-economic and demographic indicators (Harman, Leder-Elder & Biringen, 2016)
Parental alienation - prevalence July 2016, Sarah Parsons, Principal Social Worker and Assistant Director of Cafcass, stated that “parental alienation is responsible for around 80% of the most intransigent cases that come before the family courts”. ??? How many intransigent cases? Extrapolating from overseas studies – parental alienation is likely to be a feature in a minimum of 9,000 family proceeding applications per annum involving more than 18,000 children
Signs and symptoms in the child 1. A campaign of denigration / or extreme anxiety 2. Weak, absurd, or frivolous rationalizations for the criticism 3. Lack of ambivalence 4. The "independent-thinker" phenomenon 5. Reflexive support of the alienating parent 6. Absence of guilt over cruelty to the alienated parent 7. The presence of borrowed scenarios 8. Spread of the animosity to the friends and/or extended family of the alienated parent
A campaign of denigration or extreme anxiety • Hostile and abusive • Physically resisting contact • Rejecting phone calls, letters, emails and gifts and expressing hatred
A campaign of denigration or extreme anxiety Helen’s expressed fear of her father is a key feature of her narrative. She has not seen her father for three years, yet he lives within half a mile of her home. Helen expresses hypervigilance and hyperarousal, avoiding normal activities and adjusting her life to minimise the likelihood of encountering her father. Helen’s fear and anxiety seem disproportionate to the actual risk her father poses to her. Both Helen and her mother referred to Helen and Liam being so frightened that their teeth chattered .
Weak, absurd, or frivolous rationalizations for the criticism
Lack of ambivalence - cannot acknowledge any good aspects of the rejected parent “ all bad ” – black and white thinking I asked Jack to tell me all the things that he liked about mum. […] He wrote kind then nice . I asked Jack what he meant by nice and he wrote hugs me; she always bes nice. I asked Jack to tell me what he liked about his father. He was unable to say anything at all positive. I asked Jack what he didn’t like about his mother and he said nothing . When I asked Jack what he didn’t like about his father he wrote everything . Child aged 7, no contact for 3 years
The "independent-thinker" phenomenon I asked Molly to tell me the best bits about daddy. Her response is “When we don’t have to see him. Cos I don’t like seeing him and I always find a way to get out of seeing him.” I asked how Molly got out of seeing her father. “By pretending to be sick. I am actually sick sometimes .”
Reflexive support of the alienating parent Child and parent are enmeshed – an overly dependent relationship, best friends, child can see no fault in parent
Absence of guilt over cruelty to the alienated parent “Now, I definitely don’t want to see him at all. There is no emotion or purpose in his letters, they make me bored. It is pointless him sending them in the first place. He needs a job; he never has any money. Arfan said that his father had “squandered his chances” and he “had given up on him.”
The presence of borrowed scenarios Molly told me that mammy gets upset because of what happened when they were little. I asked what had happened when she was little. Molly told me that she was three, and didn’t really remember what had happened. She then became quite animated, almost excited. “ He threw me down the stairs, that’s what I remember. I was asleep. He carried me onto the landing and threw me down the stairs. I woke up when I was rolling down the stairs, doing a roly poly. I did a cartwheel .” Molly age 8, no unsupervised contact with father since aged 2½, minimal direct contact for 5 years, no indirect contact
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