Homosexuality and Mental Health
Homosexuality and Mental Health
It was never a medical decision—and that’s why I think the action came so fast…It was a political move…That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the American Psychiatric Association running scared.
-Barbara Gittings, Activist
Getting Started
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) currently considers same-sex attraction a diagnosable and treatable mental disorder –if one is marked by persistent distress about their “sexual orientation.”
The disorder is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV TR (DMS-IV TR) as a paraphilia, euphemistically entitled, “Sexual Orientation Not Otherwise Specified.”
Psychiatrists began to use this clunky phrase to refer to homosexuality in 1987, after compromising with radical activists for more than a decade about what constitutes politically-correct verbiage. Negotiations have centered primarily on how to balance the demands of radical political activists with the right of the individual patient to self-determination, which requires that psychiatry leave the doors open to treatment and implies that homosexuality is in fact a mental disorder.
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This is an excellent work-in-progress by Ryan Sorba, a courageous warrior against homosexual political correctness. Most people have no idea how political, violent, and unscientific the push to have homosexuality de-pathologized in the psychiatric profession in the 60's, 70's and beyond.
A long read but worth it
It was never a medical decision—and that’s why I think the action came so fast…It was a political move…That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the American Psychiatric Association running scared.
-Barbara Gittings, Activist
Getting Started
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) currently considers same-sex attraction a diagnosable and treatable mental disorder –if one is marked by persistent distress about their “sexual orientation.”
The disorder is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV TR (DMS-IV TR) as a paraphilia, euphemistically entitled, “Sexual Orientation Not Otherwise Specified.”
Psychiatrists began to use this clunky phrase to refer to homosexuality in 1987, after compromising with radical activists for more than a decade about what constitutes politically-correct verbiage. Negotiations have centered primarily on how to balance the demands of radical political activists with the right of the individual patient to self-determination, which requires that psychiatry leave the doors open to treatment and implies that homosexuality is in fact a mental disorder.
--------------------------------------------------
This is an excellent work-in-progress by Ryan Sorba, a courageous warrior against homosexual political correctness. Most people have no idea how political, violent, and unscientific the push to have homosexuality de-pathologized in the psychiatric profession in the 60's, 70's and beyond.
A long read but worth it