There are psychologists with names in positions of influence who are intentionally disabling the mental health system response to the pathology in the family courts for their own financial and career status gain.
Do you want to know their names? That’s easy, just identify the top-tier forensic custody evaluators at the AFCC – Association of Family & Conciliation Courts. Start there.
Diagnostic risk assessments for child abuse need to be conducted in the family courts – all the time – routinely. They are NOT occurring from the forensic psychologists. The court-involved forensic custody evaluators do NOT conduct the needed diagnostic risk assessments for child abuse.
That needs to change.
Forensic custody evaluations represent a failed experiment in service delivery to a vulnerable population – forensic custody evaluations need to end – and clinical diagnostic assessments need to replace them in the family courts
But… the moment that happens then all the forensic custody evaluators admit their previous negligent failure to conduct proper risk assessments for child abuse, they admit their previous misdiagnoses, and their careers in the family courts end because all they know how to do is their failed forensic custody evaluations – they don’t know how to assess, diagnose, or treat the pathology in the family courts.
I do.
But… the moment they accept my instruction… they acknowledge their current ignorance (lack of knowledge or information) and incompetence (failure to do something successfully) in diagnosing and treating the pathology in the family courts – and they admit their prior failure with their experimental forensic custody evaluation approach.
If Dr. Childress needs to educate them about the pathology – then they are not currently competent by their demonstrated need to be educated about what the pathology is, and how to accurately diagnose the problem and treat it successfully.
Once they admit their prior failure using their made-up experimental forensic custody evaluation approach, once they acknowledge their current ignorance (lack of knowledge or information) in order to acquire the necessary knowledge, once they start to diagnose the child abuse in the family courts – their careers in the family courts are over because they admit their previous failure, ignorance, incompetence, and negligently unethical malpractice.
The forensic custody evaluators in leadership positions at the AFCC have a choice,
1) They can begin facilitating the switch to clinical diagnostic risk assessments for child abuse that apply the DSM-5 diagnostic system,
Or…
2) They can seek to prevent the transition away from their failed forensic custody evaluations over to clinical diagnostic assessments and the application of the DSM-5 to the pathology – for their own personal financial and career status gain.
There is currently a conflict of interest among the forensic psychologist leadership at the AFCC.
- If they facilitate the needed changes – then they admit their previous failure and their careers in the family courts are over.
- If they don’t facilitate the needed changes, then they disable the mental health system response to the pathology – they disable diagnosis and treatment – they prevent identifying the problem and fixing it… because they don’t want it fixed for their own personal financial and career status gain.
The psychologist leadership at the AFCC is currently making the decision NOT to switch to clinical diagnostic assessments for child abuse in the family courts that apply the established knowledge of the DSM-5 diagnostic system to the pathology in the family courts.
The pathology of concern in the family courts is a false (factitious) attachment pathology being imposed on the child for secondary gain to a pathological parent.
- DSM-5 300.10 Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another – DSM-5 V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse.
The pathology of concern in the family courts is a shared (induced) persecutory delusion.
- DSM-5 297.1 Delusional Disorder (shared); persecutory type – DSM-5 V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse.
Apply the DSM-5 – routinely – in all cases.
The practice of forensic custody evaluations needs to end, and clinical diagnostic assessments for child abuse to the appropriate differential diagnoses for each parent need to be routinely conducted in all high conflict custody cases in the family courts.
All. Routinely.
- A clinical diagnostic risk assessment for possible child abuse in family court custody conflicts could return an accurate diagnosis with a routine second-opinion through telehealth in 4-to-6 weeks for a cost of around $5,000.
- A typical forensic custody evaluation that does NOT return a diagnosis takes from 6-to-9 MONTHS for a cost of around $20,000 to $40,000.
The forensic custody evaluator leadership in the AFCC has a substantial conflict of interest – and they are intentionally disabling the mental health system response to the pathology (diagnosis and treatment) for their own personal financial and career status gain.
Diagnosing pathology – applying the established knowledge of the DSM-5 diagnostic system – is NOT a “new” approach – it is the standard approach throughout all the rest of professional psychology – just NOT with forensic custody evaluations.
The forensic custody evaluators do something different of their own creation – called a “forensic custody evaluation” – which does NOT diagnose the problem using the established diagnostic systems of professional psychology.
An independent review of forensic custody evaluations by the New York Blue Ribbon-Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations found that forensic custody evaluations “lack scientific or legal value”, that they are “harmful to children”, and that their defective reports can be “dangerous”.
From NY Blue Ribbon Commission: “By an 11-9 margin, a majority of Commission members favor elimination of forensic custody evaluations entirely, arguing that these reports are biased and harmful to children and lack scientific or legal value. At worst, evaluations can be dangerous, particularly in situations of domestic violence or child abuse
All mental health professionals have duty to protect obligations.
From Wikipedia Duty to Protect: “In medical law and medical ethics, the duty to protect is the responsibility of a mental health professional to protect patients and others from foreseeable harm.”
Failure to conduct a proper risk assessment for child abuse when a risk assessment is warranted by the child’s symptoms and context would represent a professionally negligent failure in duty to protect obligations.
Cornell Law School Definition of Negligence: “Negligence is a failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances. The behavior usually consists of actions, but can also consist of omissions when there is some duty to act.”
Diagnosis guides treatment. In order to fix the problem in the family (treatment), we FIRST need to identify (diagnose) what the problem is… at a professional level.
All doctors should diagnose what the pathology is using the DSM-5 diagnostic system of the American Psychiatric Association and the ICD-11 diagnostic system of the World Health Organization… it is Child Psychological Abuse (DSM-5 V995.51; ICD-11 QE82.2)
All mental health professionals have duty to protect obligations.
The ICD-11 diagnostic system from the World Health Organization provides the diagnostic billing code numbers for ALL medical and psychiatric disorders. The ICD-11 provides the following diagnostic criteria for FDIA:
From ICD-11: “Factitious disorder imposed on another is characterised by feigning, falsifying, or inducing medical, psychological, or behavioural signs and symptoms or injury in another person, most commonly a child dependent, associated with identified deception.”
From ICD-11 6D51 FDIA: “The individual seeks treatment for the other person or otherwise presents him or her as ill, injured, or impaired based on the feigned, falsified, or induced signs, symptoms, or injuries.
Criterion 1: The allied parent is inducing psychological and behavioral symptoms in the dependent child to deceive the Court regarding the normal-range parenting of the targeted parent.
Criterion 2: The allied parent then presents the child to the Court and to mental health professionals as being injured by the (normal-range) parenting of the targeted parent, and as having an impaired relationship with the targeted parent that supposedly requires a child protection response.
The pathology of concern in the family courts is a factious attachment pathology imposed on the child for secondary gain to the allied parent. The potential secondary gain (rewards) to the allied parent for creating false pathology in the child include:
- Court Manipulation: the parent seeks to manipulate the Court’s decisions regarding child custody by inducing false attachment pathology in the child toward the other parent,
- Spousal Abuse: the allied parent uses the child’s induced attachment pathology as a weapon of spousal emotional and psychological abuse of the targeted parent,
- Regulatory Object: The pathological narcissistic-borderline-dark personality parent is using the child as a “regulatory object” to meet the allied parent’s own emotional and psychological needs.
There is currently a substantial conflict of interest with the forensic custody evaluator leadership within the AFCC.
Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857
Dr. Childress Consulting 