The APA and the Mental Health Domestic Violence Scandal

We call on the American Psychological Association (APA) to halt its scandalous facilitation of domestic violence:

• • The American Psychological Association (APA) published a scientific paper in 2018 in the world's second most prestigious journal (as of Dec 2018) that concludes that parental alienation is domestic violence. Click here for a news story overview of this scientific paper.

  • The APA owns the copyright to this paper (as written in the margins of the paper).

  • Inexplicably, the APA maintains an official policy that it ostensibly has no official position on parental alienation.

  • We believe that the APA should instead condemn domestic violence and that this omission is scandalous, contributing to a tendency for mental health professionals to facilitate this domestic violence and child abuse, or as the APA describes it in another of its journals "common false beliefs about parental alienation."

  • The APA knows that its failure to have a position on parental alienation is based on deeply flawed research that it refuses to share. This is documented in a peer reviewed paper: In 2010, the APA's Dr. Silva criticized the study upon which it is based, saying it is “outdated” and “in need of review” , while declining to make it available. However, no change to the policy was ever initiated.

  • Instead, the APA denigrates these victims of domestic violence with innuendo, suggesting that erased parents are perpetrators of domestic violence rather than the victims of this abuse, with a vague reference to the president of the United States and violence, while questioning the very existing of this common clinical phenomenon. To wit:

    • "The American Psychological Association believes that all mental health practitioners as well as law enforcement officials and the courts must take any reports of domestic violence in divorce and child custody cases seriously. An APA 1996 Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family noted the lack of data to support so-called "parental alienation syndrome", and raised concern about the term's use. However, we have no official position on the purported syndrome."

  • Editors note: the only difference between PAS and PA is that the little APA changed the definition of syndrome between DSM-IV and DSM-5, while adding a section on child psychological abuse, so that PA now fits not into the syndrome section, but under child psychological abuse, which the APA notes is as harmful as child sexual abuse.

  • The folks with the most "common false beliefs about parental alienation" might be the APA itself.

  • Anecdotally, the APA's official position is raised frequently in court proceedings to facilitate domestic violence and child abuse.

  • See also, the APA and the mental health child abuse scandal.

  • The relevant authors of DSM-5 note that parental alienation is included in DSM-5 under child psychological abuse.

  • Note that parental alienation is gender neutral.