Parental Alienation, DSM-V and ICD-11

Parental alienation is a serious mental condition that affects thousands of children, adolescents, and their families. The essential feature of parental alienation is that a child – usually one whose parents are engaged in a hostile divorce – allies himself or herself strongly with one parent (the preferred parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the alienated parent) without legitimate justification. Parental alienation is not simply a minor aberration in the life of a family, but a serious mental condition. Because of the false belief that the alienated parent is a dangerous person, the child loses one of the most important relationships in his or her life. When the symptoms of parental alienation are recognized, this condition is preventable and treatable in many instances. Parental alienation has been an issue in legal cases in the U.S. since at least the 1820s and it has been discussed in the mental health literature since the 1940s. This book explains why the time has come for the concept of parental alienation to be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) and the International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Edition (ICD-11).

This book was published as a special issue of the American Journal of Family Therapy.