Detection-Rule Leakage and Trust Camouflage: A Function-Over-Form Model of Adversarial Adaptation in Open-Audience Mental-Health Communication

Public mental-health education helps people name harmful behavior, seek support, and leave abusive dynamics. This manuscript identifies a narrower adversarial failure mode in open-audience psychological communication: the same detection rules that help victims and bystanders identify harm may also teach motivated actors what signals to stop displaying. The paper names this process Detection-Rule Leakage and proposes Trust Camouflage as the adapted use of trusted psychological, therapeutic, institutional, or safety language to preserve harmful behavioral function while improving surface credibility. The central safeguard is function-over-form analysis: evaluating whether communication preserves repair, evidence, accountability, proportional consequences, and longitudinal pattern over time. The manuscript presents a falsifiable cognitive-security framework and pre-validation measurement proposal, not a diagnostic tool, clinical instrument, custody tool, HR tool, or relationship verdict.