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Litigant Preparation by Mental Health Professionals

By David A. Martindale
November 02, 2014

Stop it.

It is likely that a dispassionate examination of both the intended and unintended, positive and negative, effects on the custody evaluation process of pre-evaluation litigant preparation by forensic mental health consultants (FMHCs), would lead to one conclusion: the probability that evaluators will develop distorted views of prepared litigants exceeds the probability that evaluators will develop more accurate views. There will be times when litigants will experience transitory anxiety, triggered by an impending evaluation, and this anxiety will impair their ability to present themselves in a natural (and positive) manner. This, in turn, may lead to an inaccurate assessment. When litigants are troubled by transitory anxiety, however, they are more likely to secure needed assistance from a skilled treatment provider than from a FMHC.

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