What Can Go Wrong In a Psychological Evaluation in Family Court© 2020

by Sandra L. Brown, MA

The Institute—saferelationshipsmagazine.com

If you’re holding out for the court system to be just as excited as you are to know about the narcissist, and you want the Judge to realize the fifty reasons he should not have custody, and for the Judge to be astonished at the depth of depravity--we need to talk.

Hi, I’m Sandra L. Brown, MA with The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction. I have worked in this field with survivors for over 30 years now as a therapist.  And in that time, I have learned that a multitude of things can go wrong in a Psych Eval and it is not the panacea that survivors hope it is.  Before you start down that road, you need to be armed with the facts in The Garden of Good and Evil Psych Evals.

I know I am preaching to the choir when I say that the court does not understand what the big deal is about personality disordered parents in general, and narcissism as dangerous, in particular.  We in the field are not where we want to be when it comes to judicial education. We barely got them to understand Domestic Violence after 40 long years.  They have barely recovered from having to consider those issues in custody and now, we are asking them to understand that all abusers are not created equal and that there are some that are the cream of the crop that deserve EXTRA understanding and different guidelines for custody, and we wish they would understand that too.

Survivors understand the exceptional role education played in their wake-up call to exit the relationship. Pathology education did you a great service when it taught you about the likely permanence of these disorders and the likely impact to your children.  And in turn, with that solid understanding, you want the court to understand it too because they will come to the same conclusion about the best interest of the child and the dangerousness of someone else’s pathology on others—especially children.

Survivor’s often hope that a Psychological Evaluation will uncover the toxic land mine of their partner’s disorder and the court will be grateful you have shown them what they are dealing with.  But over 30 years, I can tell you that unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.  It SHOULD be the case—it should happen routinely in a perfect world with a judicial branch that ‘gets it.’  But it doesn’t.  And before you count on that, here’s somethings to consider which has made this the unfortunate reality it is:

All Psychological Evaluators Don’t Understand Pathology

Unless you work in the psychology field, you might not realize that all court psychologists, or even outside psychologists that can be utilized, aren’t necessarily ‘fluent’ in personality disorders.  One would think that all that time in graduate school would produce evaluators who are up to speed about the worst diagnosis in the DSM5.  And even I, wrongly assumed that if they were a ‘psychologist,’ they had good training in psychopathology because THEY ARE A psychologist! I would say at least half of the mental health professionals I train are psychologists, so obviously they didn’t get a great training in personality disorders.

Sure, we all got ‘a psychopathology’ course which tip toed over the top of ‘the x number of personality disorders’ and their names.  Unless one is specializing IN psychopathology, like personality disorders, that’s all they likely had and little else. 

Even today in grad school, personality disorders are taught as a list of symptoms but is NOT taught as the interpersonal and relational danger and nightmare they are. That means even if an evaluator recognized ‘grandiosity,’ they aren’t likely to know why, how, and all the trauma that can be dished out by that symptom in the disorder in your relationship and with your kids.  It’s a far cry to know that grandiosity is a symptom and know what it does in relationships, traumatizing everyone in their wake.

Your details related to ‘typical’ narcissistic behavior that is known to be traumatic by those who understand narcissism, could fall on incompetence and unrecognized for the trauma it was to you, or produced in your children.  If they don’t understand it, your details are likely to sound as if you are attempting to alienate.

All Psychological Evaluators Don’t Use The Same Assessment Tools

Ok, so you realize you don’t have a very ‘with it’ evaluator. You are hoping to God, that beyond the evaluator interviewing him and maybe not seeing NPD, at LEAST it will show up from the testing instruments used on him.

Maybe. Maybe not.  It is astonishing to me that there is not an absolute, set in stone, standardized testing instrument that must, must, must be used in custody cases. There isn’t across the board. This is what I mentioned when I said we aren’t where we need to be within the court system.

Court psychologists might use ‘xxx’ assessment and a private psychologist might use a ‘yyy’ assessment.  Sometimes both court and private psychologists aren’t EVEN using a test that picks up on personality disorders. WHY, I do not know since those are the disorders we SHOULD be most concerned with in parenting.  In my opinion, this is seriously wrong.

Evaluators tend to use broad-based assessment tools. It is sort of like if you have a cold or flu, the doctor orders a broad-based antibiotic that covers the most possible symptoms. Wrongly, evaluators are prone to using a broad-based assessment tool that is broad enough to capture a wide variety of ‘symptoms’ like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and a host of more common mental health issues, but NOT broad enough to capture symptoms in personality disorders. 

Shouldn’t we be concerned about capturing the worst and most dangerous disorders in the DSM? To me, this isn’t rocket science and because there hasn’t been ‘a’ absolutely-must-be-used assessment tool, they often use broad-based tools.

P.S.--These are old school tests that they likely learned in grad school and haven’t had to do a lot since they learned that test because they are still popular enough to use. They just aren’t specific enough. Some of these older tests ‘say’ they do test for PDs, but they are so broad and vague they don’t do a good job with the tiny bit of personality symptoms it looks at. There are very elaborate personality disorder assessment tools, but evaluators don’t tend to lean towards them and it’s not likely your requesting that tool, will mean that’s what they will use. 

On top of that, if your case drags on and on, or you go back to court years later and want to do another psych eval, it could show something completely different if they use another type of assessment tool. You could have two competing outcomes.

If you have built your case on the hopes that the psych eval is going to deliver the diagnosis you know he has, and it doesn’t—then you have to have another legal plan.

Court Teams—Everyone On Board!

So, in a perfect world with a court system that gets it, we wouldn’t have a Guardian Ad Litem who doesn’t know squat about personality disorders, chit chatting with the Evaluator who also doesn’t know…comparing notes and deciding that both of you are two normal, but stressed out parents that just need a co-parenting plan.  Neither are on board about the personality disorder and the evaluation doesn’t note it, and in turn, often the Ad Litem doesn’t note it either. So, you look as though you are alienating to two members of the team.

Judges Don’t Understand Pathology

Judges are asked to understand a lot of things—botched surgeries in medical malpractice, pharmaceutical companies that kill others, personal injury, insurance fraud and in family court, they are asked to understand psychology, trauma, and psychopathology.  All of which were not in their attorney courses.

As I said, Judges are required (in some states) to take their version of continuing education in Domestic Violence and that’s about as far as it has gotten.  To argue a case based on a diagnosis that a Judge, like the evaluator or Ad Litem, don’t understand the dangerousness of what the diagnosis ‘implies,’ means the Judge is going to default to other more standardized ways custody is handled.  Unless you have an evidence-packed case full of documentation that can prove a repeating pattern of behavior over a period of time, a diagnosis alone may not get their attention.

We absolutely NEED Judges to understand these disorders. But we aren’t there yet. If they don’t understand or can’t be brought to the understanding of why THAT diagnosis is dangerous in co-parenting, then you have paid thousands of dollars for reports that have fallen on a pathology-illiterate Judge and did nothing for your case.

Tit For Tat

Too many times, because this is how pathological people ‘react,’ if you request a Psych Eval on him, he will request one on you.  The same broad-based assessment that missed his personality disorder will not likely miss your trauma disorder (that 75% of survivors have) because these assessments CAN and DO pick up on things like Acute Stress Disorder, PTSD, or CPTSD.

You cannot assume you don’t have a trauma disorder unless a trauma mental health professional said you do not.  But if you do have one, now, you have a diagnosis and he doesn’t.

His side is likely to bring in a trauma expert to discuss all the things that can happen with trauma—flashbacks, triggering, depression and anxiety.

Bad and wrong? Absolutely. The Judges need to learn that if you GOT trauma from your partner, it is a good indication of parenting style and possible trauma to the kids. But they aren’t there yet.

Playing Poker

We aren’t where we need to be is my mantra. And in one area that can impact court, is in these ‘Psych Eval Wars.’  When Tit for Tat starts, and evaluations are ordered on everyone, each side brings in their biggest guns—expensive guns. 

His side brings in a Forensic Psychologist or an Expert Witness in Psychopathology that can demolish the pitiful little test the evaluator used that isn’t even ADEQUATE for personality disorder diagnosis. And that’s what the Forensic Psychologist or Psychopathologist is going to do – they will laugh at the test, and probably say the court psychologist or evaluator is an idiot for using it, and it’s value will be completely diminished by a Forensic or Pathologist whose whole training IS psychopathology and personality disorders.  Even if a miracle occurred and a diagnosis did pop up, a Forensic can easily beat it down unless the Evaluator used a creme de le crème assessment tool (which isn’t likely). 

His side, since they have already paid the Forensic or Pathologist, is likely to ask the doctor to do some type of interview with your former partner, and with his gigantic credentials he will do something mild to not get into deep terrain that might turn up a diagnosis (which they don’t want), and then he will testify to ‘his opinion.’

The field of Forensic Psychology dates back to the late 1800’s and has a respected ‘position’ within the legal system.  They are essentially psychologists with additional legal training. 

On your side, you might have a trauma therapist to undo anything that was revealed on your Psych Eval; to try to normalize the development of PTSD and to try to give some credence (especially in the absence of physical or sexual violence) why this would happen.  And why despite trauma, you can be a functional parent.

As she tries to apply the ‘narcissistic abuse’ and/or ‘pathological relationship’ reasoning, what she has to offer is a field history that has just begun, that has a minimal amount of research solely devoted to this topic, that has not yet been declared a ‘specialization’ or has any clinical credentialing for specific training associated with it.

Comparing a field that dates to the late 1800’s to the field we are trying to develop, we of course are challenged in the utilization of anything that compares. That IS an issue that comes up.

We aren’t where we want to be, yet.

What to DO?

There are definitely risk factors in utilizing Psych Evals. It is hard to know how well an evaluator knows personality disorders, what instruments they use, how up to speed a judge is, whether it will turn into Tit for Tat and result in Playing Poker—and a very expensive poker game at that.  There are many variables that make it totally unpredictable and whether that expensive report will do what you hoped.  Consider it carefully and discuss with your attorney about the success rate they have had with it. More importantly, is to hear the worse case scenarios so you know what to expect.

In the meantime—what to do that is less risky? The reason everyone’s mantra is ‘document, document, document’ is it’s the best route to proving ‘a repeating pattern of behavior’ that is detrimental to ‘the best interest of the child.’ In most cases because of a lack of a Judge’s ‘training’ in personality disorders, evidence that shows a repeating pattern of behavior is often more effective than diagnosis.  They are used to dealing with behavior.  Criminal courts is based on behavior and so is family court. The only effective remedy in family court is hard consistent evidence that dangerous behavior is unremitting. 

Along with ‘document, document, document’ is ‘report, report, report.’  Survivors miss opportunities of gathering crucial evidence when they do not report. Even if the police do nothing more than issue a police report, that report is evidence. Every behavior that is reportable, should be reported for that hefty real estate contained on a police report or documentations from teachers, school counselors, coaches, etc. 

While a judge may not know the DSM symptoms of narcissism, he can recognize repeating behavior especially when it is grouped together by events such as whole list of times of stalking or cyber stalking.  Or a whole list of times and examples of communicating threats in texts.  These are best presented in police reports accompanied by any physical or digital evidence.

Since ‘we aren’t there yet’ with the courts and this type of abuse is less familiar to Judges,  as tempting as it is for survivor’s to throw around the ‘narcissistic abuse’ lingo,  it is better to use what they are familiar with and what they have to take continuing education for—domestic violence. 

It is better to couch the relational dynamics in terms that are more familiar to the court than to chance using something they don’t understand, or which there is not much of a field history.  It’s better to use the word ‘psychological abuse’ or ‘psychological violence’ than it is to use ‘gaslighting.’  It is better to use the word ‘physically not present for the kids’ than to call it ‘ghosting the kids.’

Even though pathological relationships ARE different than domestic violence, DV has already made their way into the court structure and until pathological relationships become a subset of DV that is well understood, utilize the Court’s understanding and language.