The Peers Outsmarting Homophobia (POSH) booklet

For same sex attracted young people, workers, families and friends.

 
 
Peers Out Smarting Homophobia (POSH) booklet. Belief 2: Homosexuality is a mental illness
The POSH booklet can be downloaded here

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Check out some useful websites.

There is no evidence at all that homosexuality is a physical or mental illness. Many years ago, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The list of mental disorders (called the DSM) is supposed to be based on scientific evidence, however the evidence consisted of studies involving same sex attracted people who were in therapy for emotional problems.

When research, undertaken by Evelyn Hooker in the 1950s, was expanded to include a more representative sample of gay men homosexuality was not found to be a mental illness (Australian Psychological Society, 2006). This research compared heterosexual and homosexual men and found there was no difference between them in terms of mental health (Religious Tolerance, 2006).

In 1970 and 1971, gay and lesbian activists lobbied the APA and in 1973, homosexuality was removed from the list. In 1994, the association released the following statement ‘...homosexuality is neither a mental illness nor a moral depravity. It is the way a portion of the population expresses human love and sexuality’.

The Australian Psychological Society (APS) also urges all mental health professionals to dispel the belief that homosexuality is a mental illness. It is recognised, however, that the stigma and discrimination same sex attracted people face can make them sick.  The belief that HIV/AIDS is a gay disease is also wrong. HIV is transmitted through homosexual and heterosexual contact. World-wide, the majority of HIV transmissions have been through heterosexual contact.

How young people outsmarted this belief.
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I wanted mum to tell my dad cos I was scared of how he would react. In the end he actually reacted better than my mum, but due to her I got sent off to the local GP (a member of their church - is that a conflict of interest or what...) who then sent me off to a shrink friend of his for intensive therapy. I lasted 2 sessions then I chucked a sad and refused to go to any more unless my parents went to an equal number of PFLAG sessions. They refused so I refused to go anymore as well. Trent 19 years
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My mum recently told me she heard there are hormones I can take to make me ‘better’. I wanted to tell her to get fucked cos I'm not sick!!!! She's so fucken clueless...which is quite sad for someone who's as well educated as she is (both of my parents have masters degrees)...but I guess that doesn’t equal tolerance. Freddy 21 years
 

What can I say......you can probably tell from my postcode that I live in a small town which already makes things difficult. The attitude here is that homosexuality is some sort of mental disease and gays and lesbians are frowned upon. Currently I'm in yr 12 studying for my TEE and the last of my problems is worrying about my sexuality but it's something that's always there, and I will admit that it does make things like study much harder. My school-life isn't all bad, but I can credit that to the fact that I'm not ‘out’ to the entire world yet. In fact the only people that know the true me is my best friends, the guyz I talk to on the net and my parents. Even though my parents still don't believe I'm gay :( they just keep telling me that that I've got some mental problems or I'm abnormal and that ‘I can change if I want to’. No offence to them but how dumb can you get: I am who I am and I can't change that. I've known I'm this way since I was about! 13 but only really admitted it to myself at the end of last year when I first told my parents about it. Well that's enough ranting and raving from me, if it helps I think the one thing that would make my life easier would be my parents accepting me for the person I am & not telling me I've got mental problems, that really gets me down. Haden 17 years


 

 

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Last Updated: 28 May, 2007
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