Working with Adult-Child Survivors of Severe Parental Alienation Abuse: Survivors and Mental Health Practitioners' Perspectives: A Qualitative Study [Data Notes]

Working with Adult-Child Survivors of Severe Parental Alienation Abuse: Survivors and Mental Health Practitioners Perspectives. A qualitative study.

By Alyse Price-Tobler

The PhD thesis from USC Queensland is currently under embargo for one year, as directed by the Dean of Graduate Studies. However, the data notes associated with the thesis are accessible in the UniSC Research Bank and F1000Research, an open-access publishing platform affiliated with the Taylor & Francis Group.

Regarding journal requests concerning the availability of data sets from the embargoed thesis for publication purposes, the following details are provided:

1. Explanation of the rationale, protocol, and validation procedures for the datasets.
2. Information outlining any limitations associated with the dataset.
3. Guidance on where and how to access the dataset to be included in a Data Availability Statement.
4. Formal data citation reference for the dataset.

Abstract-

These two studies present new insights into the perspectives of adult-child survivors of severe parental alienation (SPA) and their mental health practitioners (MHPs) in addressing the complex challenges of SPA support and treatment. The term adult-child survivor refers to a child who has grown up and been exposed to SPA by one of their parents. Parental alienation (PA) refers to a process in which one parent (referring to the alienating parent or AP) takes actions to negatively impact the relationship between a child and their other parent (known as the targeted parent or TP) (Haines et al., 2020, p. 3). This concept is defined as the alienating parents’ behaviours influencing the child to reject the TP without a reasonable explanation (Haines et al., 2020).

The issue of childhood exposure to severe levels of parental alienating behaviours (PABs) is a prevalent and serious problem that can have long-lasting adverse effects on adult survivors. However, MHPs are often ill-equipped to work with adult survivors due to limited professional development and the lack of established best-practice treatment protocols for practitioners to reference. Therefore, this research has investigated survivors' perspectives and the MHPs who work with them regarding therapeutic practice. In particular, these two studies focus on identifying efficacious and counterproductive mental health practices.

These two studies utilised a research methodology involving a social constructionist thematic analysis approach and a qualitative research design. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from eleven adult survivors of SPA and ten MHPs who were self-acknowledged as experts in treating adult survivors of parental alienation-severe level.