Family Court Mental Health Evaluations and the Reliability of Collateral Information in New York

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Juvenile and Family Forensics

A Family Court evaluation is built almost entirely out of other people's accounts. Parents, teachers, caseworkers, and prior clinicians all describe the same child differently, and each account carries its own stake in the outcome. The reliability of an opinion in this setting is largely the reliability of how those competing narratives were tested. What the Family Court evaluation is actually deciding Unlike a criminal fitness or responsibility examination, a Family Court mental health evaluation rarely turns on a single diagnostic question. In a custody or visitation dispute the governing measure is the best interests of the child, a standard New York treats as a totality assessment in whi

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