Tragedy in Custody Cases - NYTimes.com "Friends of Man in Fatal Plunge Say They Had No Clue He Would Kill Himself and His Son" (news article, Dec. 24) reminds us that divorce and child custody cases are really medical conditions, not legal issues. They have a risk of mortality and an even greater risk of long-term emotional disability. Court professionals usually mouth the words "best interest of the child" and then proceed to do what is in the worst interest of the child: Create parental loss in the service of "fitness" determinations. These parents need counseling to deconstruct or transcend their emotional states. They are distracted from parenting, obsessed with court procedures, infuriated and overcome with a feeling of being powerless. Professionals need to lean against collusion with family destructiveness, which is often played out in a fruitless search for "justice," reparation and misguided, failed rescue efforts of children by strangers. These families need humane, family-centered therapeutic strategies to replace this collusion with its courtroom voyeurism, detachment, exploitation and destructiveness. The writer is senior attending psychiatrist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital.