Evaluating PAS: A Critique of Elizabeth Ellis's “A Stepwise Approach to Evaluating Children for PAS”

Parental Alienation Disorder: Why Label Children with a Mental Diagnosis?

“…Further discussion of how PAD may impact domestic violence families is in a separate article by these authors (Walker & Shapiro, in prep-aration, this issue) as well as articles by Neustein andLesher (2009) andMeier (2010, this issue). The needs of children change as they grow and develop, which means that the child's developmental growth trajectory must be taken into account when designing any intervention program (Johnston, Roseby, & Kuehnle, 2009).…”

“…Such a diagnosis will inevitably put the rejected parent in the position of being the ''good'' injured party while the alienating parent is seen as the ''bad'' party. In fact, research has shown that the rejected parent is often not so innocent, and the issues are far more complex (Johnston, Olesen, & Walters, 2005a, 2005bJohnston, Lee, Olesen, & Walters, 2005;Neustein & Lesher, 2009). …”