Action Alert: Tell Major Media Outlets, DSM Committee that Parental Alienation is Real and Harms Children

A new national Associated Press article discusses Parental Alienation and whether family courts should consider target parents’ claims of being alienated from their children by their ex-spouses. Led by psychiatrist William Bernet, a group of 70 mental health experts from 12 countries are part of an effort to add Parental Alienation to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the American Psychiatric Association’s “bible” of diagnoses.
To ensure that the DSM-V Task Force is aware of the scope and severity of Parental Alienation, thousands of our supporters responded to our Action Alert earlier this year to write to the DSM-V Task Force. Our message got through–this week Dr. Darrel Regier, vice chair of the task force, told the Associated Press, “We’ve gotten an enormous amount of mail–more than [on] any other issue.” That “enormous amount of mail” was from you, our supporters. The National Organization for Women, which seeks to suppress recognition of Parental Alienation both in family courts and in the mental health community, criticized our campaign and declared a counter-campaign against it. We want you to write a letter to the DSM committee explaining that Parental Alienation is very real and needs to be taken seriously by our family courts–to do so, visit our campaign page here. Also, please write a Letter to the Editor concerning the AP article–click here and choose the email address of the appropriate newspaper(s) at the bottom of the page. Also, we urge you to join the debate in the comments section of the MSNBC version of the article by clicking here.