Parental alienation syndrome is a term coined by child psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner drawing upon his clinical experiences in the early 1980s.
In addition, therapy with the child to stop alienation and remediate the damaged relationship with the targeted parent was recommended.
[27] PAS has been cited in high-conflict divorce and child custody cases, particularly as a defense against accusations of domestic violence or sexual abuse.
[5][20] The status of the syndrome, and thus its admissibility in the testimony of experts, has been the subject of dispute, with challenges raised about its acceptance by professionals in the field, whether it follows a scientific methodology that is testable, whether it has been tested and has a known error rate, and the extent to which the theory has been published and peer-reviewed.
[7][29][30][31] The American Psychological Association declined to give a position on PAS, but raised concerns over its lack of supporting data and how the term is used.
[5][33][34] The United States National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges rejected PAS, recommending it not be used for the consideration of child-custody issues.
[25] The admissibility of PAS was rejected by an expert review panel and the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in the United Kingdom[35][36] and Canada's Department of Justice recommends against its use.
Gardner portrayed PAS as well accepted by the judiciary and having set a variety of precedents, but legal analysis of the actual cases indicates that as of 2006 this claim was incorrect.
PAS is not included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).
[37] A survey of American custody evaluators, published in 2007, found that half of the respondents disagreed with its inclusion, while a third thought it should be.
[11] A related formulation, named parental alienation disorder, has been proposed, suggesting that inclusion of PAS in the DSM-5 would promote research and appropriate treatment, as well as reduce misuse of a valid and reliable construct.
[5][6] The lack of objective research and replication, falsifiability, and independent publication has led to claims that PAS is pseudoscience or junk science.
[33] After his initial publications, Gardner revised his theory to make fathers and mothers equally likely to alienate or be indoctrinators and disagreed that recognition of PAS is sexist.
[11] Early Canadian court cases accepted expert opinions about PAS, used the term "syndrome" and concurred with Gardner's theory that only one parent was fully responsible for it.
There is recognition that rejection of a parent is a complex issue, and that a distinction must be made between pathological alienation and reasonable estrangement.
Of sixty-four precedent-bearing cases reviewed at that time, only two decisions, both in New York State and both in criminal courts actually set precedents.
One of the cases, subsequently upheld on appeal, found that PAS failed the Frye test as the appropriate professional community did not generally accept.
At the time, Gardner listed fifty cases on his website that he claimed set precedents that made PAS admissible.
In the first the trial court found that PAS passed the Frye test, but that finding was not reviewed on appeal so as to become precedential as the trial court "[threw] out the words 'parental alienation syndrome'" and focused instead on the "willingness and ability of each parent to facilitate and encourage a close and continuing relationship between the parents and the child" under the state's child custody best interest factors.
[7] In one New York case, Matter of Robert Coull v. Pamela Rottman, 15 N.Y.S.3d 834, 131 AD 3d 964 (2015), child support was suspended based upon a trial court's finding of a parent's alienating behaviors.