Edited sentence: A 2009 survey of mental health and legal professionals found broad skepticism of the concept of parental alienation syndrome, and caution in relation to the concept of parental alienation.Despite lobbying by proponents, the proposal was rejected in December 2012.In 2008, the American Psychological Association  noted that there is a lack of data to support the concept of parental alienation syndrome, but took no official position on the syndrome.In 2012, in anticipation of the release of the DSM-5, the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, an argument was made for the inclusion of PAS in the DSM-5 as a diagnosis related to parental alienation.Mental health professionals are reluctant to recognize so-called parental alienation syndrome.One psychologist disputes the characterization of PAS as a new syndrome, proposing instead that the phenomenon is best viewed as a combination of psychological problems, with the issue being how to develop effective treatment.Parental alienation syndrome (PAS) was proposed by child psychiatrist Richard Gardner as a means of diagnosing parental alienation within a family by virtue of identifying a cluster of symptoms that he hypothesized would only co-exist if a parent were engaged in alienating behavior.The argument was based upon the position that parental alienation and a variety of other descriptions of behaviors represent the underlying concept of parental alienation disorder.This theory involved looking for a set of psychological symptoms in a child and proposing PAS as a basis for concluding that those symptoms were caused by harmful parenting practices.Those proponents assert that children who are exposed to intimate partner distress between their parents may develop psychological symptoms as a result of that exposure.With the exclusion of PAS from the DSM-V, some advocates for the recognition of parental alienation as a diagnosable condition have since argued that elements of parental alienation are covered in the DSM-5 under the concept of "Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention", specifically, "child affected by parental relationship distress"