Richard A. Gardner

Richard A. Gardner

Richard Alan Gardner (April 28, 1931 – May 25, 2003) was an American psychiatrist known for proposing the controversial hypothesis of parental alienation syndrome (PAS) in 1985. He developed the idea through personal observation in his private practice to explain what he considered to be an epidemic of false accusations of child sexual abuse. In addition to his practice, Gardner held a fully credentialed position as a clinical professor, not tenured, of psychiatry in Columbia University's division of child and adolescent psychiatry. Over the course of his career he published more than 40 books and 250 articles in a variety of areas of child psychiatry and operated a company, Creative Therapeutics, Inc., that marketed materials based on his theories. Gardner testified as an expert witness in many of custody cases in the USA. Gardner committed suicide in 2003 in the late stages of type I complex regional pain syndrome.