Citation

Fares R, Najem R, Hallit S, Pélissolo A, Haddad G, Naja WJ. J. Med. Case Reports 2023; 17(1): e164.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/s13256-023-03911-3

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Parental alienation is a relatively newly described disorder, with a growing prevalence, as divorce and custody battles are becoming more and more complex with increased difficulty of joint custody. In parental alienation, one parent, the alienating parent, forms an alliance with the child involved in the custody dispute and manages to effectively alienate the targeted parent completely. The child and the alienating parent manifest a form of folie à deux and, hence, are in complete synchrony in the hatred and denigration of the targeted parent. Issues, such as potentially false allegations of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of the child by the targeted parent, arise. The child and the alienating parent become mutually convinced of the targeted parent's transgressions. Consequently, it becomes difficult for the courts and psychiatric professionals to differentiate true abuse from parental alienation.

Language: en

Keywords

Alienated parent; Alienating parent; Case report; Child custody disputes; Parental alienation