From Heartbreak to Healing

Astonishing new facts I have learned include:

• One out of three parents in the US and Canada believe they are being alienated from a child.

• Half of the parents polled in these two countries said they had not previously heard of the term “parental alienation.”

• Almost four million children in the US have experienced moderate to severe alienation. Parental alienation is now officially considered child abuse.

• 95% of mental health professionals working with parental alienation get it wrong.

• Reunification programs exist that can successfully turn around severe alienation in four days.

These statements seemed unbelievable to me when I first learned them. When exploring updates about parental alienation after writing my story, I discovered that a core group of mental health experts and legal experts have been working around the world for the last few decades to find previously unknown solutions to the parental alienation that is burgeoning throughout the world.

To counteract this problem, international and national organizations, some with local branches, have organized to study and inform others of this harmful phenomenon. These include The Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG) that holds international conferences, Parental Alienation Europe, the National Association of Parental Alienation Specialists, Parental Alienation Awareness International, and the Parental Alienation Awareness Organization USA.

Each of these groups dedicates itself to raising awareness about parental alienation. Also, the European Association of Parental Alienation Practitioners (EAPAP) is focusing on setting professional standards for practitioners who work with alienated children and their families. That is the good news.

The bad news, for now, is that not enough people know of these dedicated experts and all they have accomplished. The experts now know how to stop this abuse and prevent it from occurring in the first place, but both the public and many key mental health and legal professionals are not yet aware of what the experts know.

The rest of the good news is that with growing public awareness, together with specialized professional training and changes in the way family law is implemented, we have the potential to end this destructive epidemic that affects all of us in ways we may not know.