Thursday, 11 April 2019

A Summary On Psychological Testing Child Custody

By Patrick Foster


Disputes in family arise time and again. In the worst case, parents decide to divorce when all trials to salvage a marriage fail. For this reason, questions such as who takes care of children fully, when can the other party visit kids as well as for how long are they allowed to do so come up. When litigating children care, of paramount importance is parents mental state. Of course, children cannot be left with a parent who has a conceptual condition that predisposes them to abuse. The decision on whether psychological testing child custody in a case is important or not relies on numerous factors. One, claims that a parent has been involved in juvenile abuse before. Secondly, if a parent is addicted to drugs as well as the existence of mental instability cases in family antiquity. However, for many years, tests carried out to ascertain mental state have failed for reasons discussed below.

The custody assessment process involves a series of actions. Firstly, psychologist interview persons in question to collect various facts regarding the relationship with kids. Notably, there are no universal guidelines directing how interviews are carried out. Similarly, questions vary from one specialist to another.

For this reason, quality of assessment is different depending on who performed it. With different questions from various experts, it is impossible to prove that the interview design was proper. Similarly, the expertise of psychologists cannot be proven since one cannot tell if the questions asked were correct or not. Consequently, judges may miss out on giving custody to the best parent.

Secondly, some tests are administered during the mental assessment. There are countless factors that promote unstable mental conditions. Such is determined by various tests including Rorschach inkblot among others. Universally, these tests do not follow a particular procedure. Thus, evaluation tools and the procedure was chosen vary from one expert to another.

Consequently, experts define their own tests that may vary. Similarly, selected tools used to carry out screening differ with specialists. For this reason, it is impossible to ascertain correct results.

Observations are written down at the end of interviews and screening. It is important to note that individual behaviors are inconsistent. Particular events may trigger persons to act in a certain manner during assessment. Making judgments using that information is therefore unfair. Likewise, interview techniques, screened conditions, as well as check-up machines, vary from one specialist to another. Consequently, the ruling should not entirely depend on facts given by such professionals.

In a court of law, results are evaluated by people who may not be experts. Depending on who such an expert is representing, it is possible to interpret results to favor their clients. Such an interpretation can also differ from one assessor to another. Interviewers can lean on a particular side too when examining.

The above points show clearly how the interview is performed, to what tests are done, observations made as well as interpretation of results is a biased process. This means that custody verdict which depends on that process may be incorrect too. Judges should supplement with other evidence.




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