From mental disease to, well… you fill in the blank

Part Four of the InterstateQ.com Pride Series.

Before 1973, LGBT people were considered to be mentally diseased, sick or ill. Even today, people still believe it.

But history would be made in 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its lists of mental diseases contained in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).

For average LGBT people, the removal of homosexuality from the DSM-III meant that they would no longer be subject to involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals or tests and neither would they have to undergo such inhumane psychiatric treatments as shock-therapy.

However, the debate has raged on ever since 1973 and remains hot today, at least within religious and “ex-gay” circles.

The A.P.A. continues to state that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and in a fact sheet on sexual orientation, the A.P.A. states:

No. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals agree that homosexuality is not an illness, a mental disorder, or an emotional problem. More than 35 years of objective, well-designed scientific research has shown that homosexuality, in and itself, is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems. Homosexuality was once thought to be a mental illness because mental health professionals and society had biased information.

In the past, the studies of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people involved only those in therapy, thus biasing the resulting conclusions. When researchers examined data about such people who were not in therapy, the idea that homosexuality was a mental illness was quickly found to be untrue.

In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association confirmed the importance of the new, better-designed research and removed homosexuality from the official manual that lists mental and emotional disorders. Two years later, the American Psychological Association passed a resolution supporting this removal.

For more than 25 years, both associations have urged all mental health professionals to help dispel the stigma of mental illness that some people still associate with homosexual orientation.

In 1976, Exodus International, the largest “ex-gay” organization in the world, was founded on the premise that homosexuality is a mental disorder as well as a religious short-coming. Exodus and other “ex-gay” groups such as the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexual (NARTH) continue to say that homosexuality is a mental disease:

NARTH agrees with the American Psychological Association that “biological, psychological and social factors” shape sexual identity at an early age for most people.

But the difference is one of emphasis. We place more emphasis on the psychological (family, peer and social) influences, while the American Psychological Association emphasizes biological influences–and has shown no interest in (indeed, a hostility toward) investigating those same psychological and social influences.

There is no such thing as a “gay gene” and there is no evidence to support the idea that homosexuality is simply genetic. However, biological influences may indeed influence some people toward homosexuality; recent studies point to prenatal-hormonal influences, especially in men, that result in a low-masculinized brain; also, there may be genetic factors in some people — both of which would affect gender identity, and therefore sexual orientation. But none of these factors mean that homosexuality is normal and a part of human design, or that it is inevitable in such people, or that it is unchangeable.

Numerous examples exist of people who have successfully modified their sexual behavior, identity, and arousal or fantasies.

Unfortunately, the myth that LGBT people are mentally ill, diseased and sick continues to spread around the nation and the globe.

And, unfortunately, the debate will most likely rage on. Until there comes a time when radical portions of the religious community no longer seek to use their religious tenets to outcast and exclude other members of their human family, the propagation of false information claiming that homosexuality is mentally disordered and that sexual orientation can always be changed will continue.

Previous Pride Series Posts

• Part III - ‘Homo Nest Raided’
• Part II - Oppression Before Stonewall
• Part I - A Few Good Men (and Women)

Posted in Pride Series |