Boy accused of shooting dad becomes cause

Boy made into cause by group
Advocates say father’s death a case of alienation syndrome

ANDREW TILGHMAN, Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle | December 29, 2004

A 10-year-old child accused of fatally shooting his father this summer has become a national poster boy for a controversial and unofficial psychiatric disorder: Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Parents and others seeking formal recognition of the so-called syndrome have latched onto the death of 41-year-old Rick Lohstroh, who was killed on Aug. 27 outside his ex-wife’s Katy home.

After a bitter divorce in 2003, Lohstroh was picking up his two sons for a visit under a joint-custody agreement when the 10-year-old shot him from the back seat of the car, police said.

Since then, advocates have pointed to Lohstroh’s death to illustrate that acrimonious divorces can prompt an angry parent to turn a child against another parent.

“He’s become a martyr for Parental Alienation Syndrome,” said Dr. William Narrow, who heads the American Psychiatric Association‘s research and classification division, which determines whether disorders are formally recognized as legitimate mental illnesses.

Parents and others have flooded Narrow’s office with e-mails in recent weeks, urging the APA to include Parental Alienation Syndrome in its diagnostic manual, Narrow said.