The Harm of Parental Alienation |
What Is Parental Alienation?
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Parental alienation leads to a child’s or adolescent’s avoidance and rejection of one parent.
The impact of parental alienation can be devastating and long-lasting.
Parents in the throes of a high-conflict separation or divorce must minimize hurt and harm.
Parental Alienation (PA) is a term used to describe the refusal of a child or adolescent to engage with one parent due to the intentional or unintentional negative influence and/or manipulation of the other parent, often in the context of a high-conflict relationship breakdown, separation, or divorce. The short- and long-term negative impacts of PA on children and adolescents — who are already stressed, saddened, and confused by the myriad disruptions and breakdown of their family unit — can be devastating.
Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) was introduced in the 1980s by American child psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner. He asserted that “children who suffered from parental alienation syndrome had been indoctrinated by a vindictive parent and obsessively denigrated the other parent without cause.” While widely recognized, PA remains a controversial concept, with numerous critics raising concerns about its validity, and concerns related to false claims of parental alienating behaviors, and its potential use by abusive parents in legal proceedings.
In A Silent Epidemic, a 2022 article in the Psychiatric Times, authors Alan B. Blotcky, PhD, and........