My next Sunday’s coffee talk should be interesting. I want to talk about the solution in the family courts.
Number one is to fix the broken mental health system in the family couts. Forensic custody evaluations need to go. Clinical psychology needs to return. Standards of professional practice need to be established – then enhanced.
Judges don’t diagnose pathology. The doctors need to step up to our responsibility to the courts. It begins with the doctors.
Once we fix the broken mental health system in the family courts, this will allow us to fix the broken legal system approach to pathology. There’s a deeply pathological parent in the family.
The legal system needs to understand the pathology, anticipate it and prepare for it. We need early identification and early intervention in a step-up system of increasingly more intensive therapeutic interventions.
We know what the pathology is.
Research indicates that 90% of post-divorce parents handle child custody schedules without the court’s involvement, only 10% of families become high-conflict surrounding child custody.
Research indicates that about 6% of the population has Borderline Personality Disorder, and about 6% of the population hae Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Those are both high-conflict personalities who trigger on rejection and abandonment fears. We don’t need to diagnose the parent to know what the pathology is and it’s patterns of expression.
Recognize it as it enters the courts and intervene in a structured and step-wise approach of increasingly more intensive intervention.
My morning coffee talk this Sunday should be interesting.
The ignorant “forensic” psychologists you’ve been given are a risk-management response to the dangerousness of your ex- and the dangerousness of the courts.
Everyone in clinical psychology knows what the pathology in the family courts is – duh – narcissistic and borderline personality disordered parents activated surrounding child custody conflict.
Narcissistic and borderline personalities are high-conflict and are a way-dangerous pathology set for clinical psychologists. They are manipulatory, vengeful and retaliatory, and delusional… and delusional. They say false things and make false allegations.
A person who is deluisional and makes false allegations of “abuse” is a dangerous human until the rest of the world knows they are delusional… in case you hadn’t noticed.
A delusionally vengeful narcissistic-borderlin4-dark personality parent is a dangerous human to a clinical psychologist, especially when that dangerous human has an attorney who’s sole job is to discredit you in any way possible. The family courts are a dangerous world for clinical psychologists.
So we don’t come here. It’s a risk-management response… “I don’t work with high-conflict divorce, you want a forensic psychologist.”
We gave you your own “special” psychologists, we call them “forensic” psychologists and then gave them permission to do whatever they needed to do to protect themselves. No one cares if they actually fix anything.
No one actually thinks they can.
That is a mistake from clinical psychology. We abandoned your children and you. Forensic psychology is a complete failure. Clinical psychology needs to return to court-involved family conflict.
Treatment not custody. Solutions not fighting. We can do that. Diagnosis guides treatment.
I’m the first to return. I never turned to the dark side, I remained a doctor doing doctor things. Custody schedules are the court’s decision. I’m a doctor. My role is to identify the problem – diagnose the pathology – and fix it – treatment.
The pathology is no longer the only thing in the family courts that is dangerous to psychologists – knowledge is immensely dangerous to ignorance. You, the targeted parents are now also dangerous to the ignorant forensic psychologists.
You know more than they do about the pathology they’re treating.
The patient should NEVER know more than the doctor, but you do. That’s dangerous to the ignorant doctor. As the dangers elevate in the family courts, the psychologists will take a risk-management response.
They will A) leave, or B) learn. If they remain and don’t learn what they’re doing, then that will become increasingly dangerous to their license.
If they remain but don’t learn, that’s job security for me in my old age providing second-opinion review of their mental health reports.
If they do learn… then everything’s fixed and solved. Once the psychologists start making the accurate diagnosis of Child Psychological Abuse (DSM-5 V995.51), the courts will have the necessary clarity to take the needed actions.
We need to structure our response into a predictable approch. We know what the pathology is. Anticipate it and prepare for it. The pathology is always the same, always consistent. Identify it and fix it. Diagnose and treat the pathology in the family – a shared persecutory delusion and Child Psychological Abuse.
The moment they want to solve things – it’s solved immediately. They don’t want to solve anything because they’re exploiting the situation for their own financial gain.
It should be interesting this Sunday as I ramble on about this and that.
A Clinical Psychologist in the Family Courts – How to Escape the Adventures in Wonderland. Coffee & Crumpets this Sunday.
Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, CA PSY 18857
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