Homosexuality as a Mental Illness?

Here is a little project I conducted...

Homosexuality as a Mental Disorder?

Why is this important?
• Gays are people too and are just like the rest of us
• This affects all gay individuals
• Homosexuality is not a mental illness

The American Psychiatric Association claim
• In 1952 the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder
Why did APA classify homosexuals as mentally unstable?
• They say; mental health professionals and society had miss leading information about homosexuality, since most studies only involved lesbians and gay men in therapy
What convinced them?
• They examined data about gay people who were not in therapy, intense lobbying by gay groups, new scientific information from researchers, and disagreement from the psychiatric ranks,

“Much objective scientific research over the past 35 years shows us that homosexual orientation, in and of itself, is not associated with emotional of social problems”- American Psychiatric Association (APA)

What if someone was troubled by THEIR OWN gayness?
• The label is “sexual-orientation disturbance." This was NOT a diagnosis, says the board of trustees
Controversy
• Controversy rose when they removed the term “homosexuality” as a mental disorder because it went against the standard still used by the World Health Organization's ICD-10, the Chinese Classification, and Diagnostic Criteria of Mental Disorders and The Medical Council of India
• One person who was outraged at the new ruling was New York Psychiatrist Charles Socarides. He had been involved by circulating the petition demanding the unanimous vote.

"It is flying in the face of the one fact we know, which is that male and female are programmed to mate with the opposite sex, and this is the story of 2½ billion years of evolution and any society that hopes to survive."- Charles Socarides

• After they removed “homosexuality” as a mental illness in 1973, they replaced it in 1974 with a category of "gender identity disorder", which is a state of distress about a person’s sexual orientation, which is refering to transgendered or transsexual people. Although “gender identity disorder” is not exactly the same as “homosexual”, it is still assoiciated with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transsexual) community
What the gay community/supporters had to say
• Gay activists claimed that gender-identity disorder should NOT be assumed to be abnormal, when it is usually an expression of healthy and normal pre-homosexuality
• They also thought the reclassification was much more than a matter of semantics. They feel that the mental-disorder stigma, which is a sign of social unacceptability, is the same reason and has long been used to deny them fair housing, child custody, employment, and immigration rights
• The author of the board's position paper on homosexuality, Psychoanalyst Robert Spitzer, supports their view

"One of the justifications for the denial of civil rights to individuals whose only crime is that their sexual orientation is to members of the same sex."- Robert Spitzer

Another supporter was
• Dr. Judd Marmor, a Los Angeles psychoanalyst and candidate for the American Psychiatric Association presidency, "It is unfair to label homosexuality in and of itself a mental illness, "That is a moral judgment."
The American Psychiatric Association changes it again!
• In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association again removed the category of “gender identity disorder” and replaced it with “ego-dystonic homosexuality.”

Other facts
• LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Trans-sexual
• Homosexuals today still are discriminated against
• Transgender means the person has not changed their reproductive organs
• For twenty-one years the American Psychiatric Association (APA) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder and in 1973 it was finally removed
• Transsexual means that the person has changed their reproductive organs

Where can I find more information?
• http://www.narth.com/docs/symposium.html
• http://www.psych.org/
• http://www.soulforce.org/article/643



“Whereas homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) calls on all international health organizations, psychiatric organizations, and individual psychiatrists in other countries to urge the repeal in their own countries of legislation that penalizes homosexual acts by consenting adults in private. Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur.” - By the Board of Trustees, December 1992