Charges of inadequate and disinterested parenting are common in child custody disputes. A diligent forensic psychiatry examination will properly appraise the parenting potentials of the claimants in the context of the children and their relatedness to them to determine parental rights and child custody questions. Expert assessment must place the personality quirks of each of the parents into custodial context. Some qualities, conditions, and infirmities might not be otherwise alarming, but pose great potential risk to young and vulnerable children. Perhaps it isn’t even the parent but the company he or she keeps, the environment the children are exposed to, or even the cult the family has joined.
What impact does a parent’s psychiatric diagnosis have on parenting behavior, self-control, and mature, caring decision-making, if any? The parent’s disability may actually strengthen his devotion to his children, as a grounding force or essential ingredient to his or her self-esteem. Parental rights may also be an incentive to maintain participation in therapeutic programs, or to avoid high risk behavior. The Forensic Panel’s child psychiatry clinicians have the experience of devoted patient care to recognize the significance of infirmity on the family unit and those in it. Our child experts distinguish conditions that pose greatest risk to children in the home, and how to obviate that risk.
Peer Reviewed Psychiatric Parental & Child Custody Rights Assessment
Such sensitive proceedings may be influenced, among the attorney participants, by policy considerations. Therefore, the expert psychiatric examination must discipline itself to respect standards of the field. The Forensic Panel ensures that experienced, board certified child psychiatry specialists engage such forensic questions. Our peer-review methodology protects the forensic assessment for the potential biases and Machiavellian subplots confronting experts, and assists the psychiatric examination to diligently enhance an understanding of the parent in question through all relevant informants and sources of information to come to the proper parental and child custody rights determination.