"malicious mother syndrome:" a tought diagnosis to make.

i have recently come hard up against one of those interesting issues in psychology that has both a very real practical implication and a theoretical academic one. This "malicious mother's syndrome" has been recently thrown at one of my counselling clients by a very well known and extremely well paid psychiatrist writing for the family court.

The background: she was referred to me after leaving her husband with her children. She was (she reported) assisted to leave by the brighter futures folk associated with DoCS because of the desperate nature of the the violence and control by her husband. she told me that he made was very intimidating, withheld money as a form of control, took the car keys and forced her and the children to walk many km;s to school and the shops, frightened the children was unpredictable and unstable. She never presented as crazy over the many weeks of sessions.

she and the family were sent for an independent assessment that cost them over ten thousand dollars. oh yes...i am so in the wrong profession.

the psychiatrist assessed my client (call her julie) as inflicting this syndrome on her children. that is she systematically tries to turn the children against their father. she manipulates them subtly by saying things to them about their bad daddy, by manipulating them to be upset at handover, by brainwashing them to believe their father is scary when he really is not.

the husband convinced the psychiatrist that he was trying very hard to get on with the three girls but their reluctance is because of his ex wife not him. mmmm.... the court decided that because of this report the girls needed to spend more time with their father not less.

now for me their is a big problem. The diagnosis of MMS relies on evidence that the violence, scaryness, intimidation, control was actually not happening. it relies on it being a safe happy place with dad and mum being the manipulator. it relies on their being no abuse by the father. no abuse by the father is a necessary condition for a assessment of MMS to be logical. how can the psychiatrist possible know that?

i am not arguing for a minute that the syndrome doesn't exist, but i have concerns about how it cam be assessed accurately in our family court system where psychiatrist (and other more poorly paid clinicians) only read/see/ hear what is put in front of them in the shortest possible time and then report to the court. there just seems to be a bit weak spot in the logic of the assessment.

i am not sure i would ever be confident to make that assessment that has a very real impact on the lives of children.