Homosexuality and the DSM?

if homosexuality was in the DSM and is not there anymore does it invalidate all things in the DSM? like if they said homosexuality was a mental disorder how can we give any level of acceptance to what is in the DSM now?

or should homosexuality be put back in the DSM?

mr. knowitall my comment is that if it was in and nis now not should we not trust anything in there? science is not changing personal opinions are so mental health really is hardly a complete science it has social norms involved.

Do you mean the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?

Well it shows we can make progress, doesn't it? Witchcraft was taken out 150 years ago and homosexuality was taken out in the 70s. Science continues to make advances. Isn't that a -good- thing?

No homosexuality should not be put back in the DSM because it is not a disorder or a deficiency at all!! FAR OUT!

The decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM came from a protest of homosexual protesters who threatened major lawsuits and negative media coverage. Rather than fight, the APA caved in.

Not exactly an advancement of science===just spineless people trying to avoid lawsuits.

"so mental health really is hardly a complete science it has social norms involved" - duh. It's psychology. It's necessarily NEVER a complete science simply because no one can ever get inside another person's brain. In fact, NO science is entirely "objective." Science doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens with scientists who have certain beliefs and have to use language to describe things and convince other scientists of what they're doing and all kinds of social factors - science is necessarily SOCIAL.

So what's the big problem? Doctors in the 1800s used to randomly diagnose women with "hysteria" and then throw them in mental institutions. People with real genetic mental disorders were locked in prisons and abused. Doctors used to measure the brains of blacks in order to try to "prove" their inferiority. Ideology has always been and still is a part of all science - psychology, medicine, genetics, ALL science. There is no such thing as perfect objectivity because no human being can get outside his/her mind - you are always trapped inside yourself.

So, no, your argument makes no sense. Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Its inclusion in the DSM is merely a reflection of the deep roots of homophobia and hatred of gays in our society. This has religious and cultural roots.

People who are not in the mental health business don't realize that, to some degree, the creation of diagnostic categories is a political process. At one level, you are right to be suspicious of the DSM. There was, for example, a proposal to include something called "Self-Defeating Personality Disorder" in the DSM; this disorder was supposedly present mainly in women. A Canadian psychologist by the name of Paula Caplan argued against and ridiculed this proposed diagnosis, which had virtually no scientific evidence to back it. She wrote a book, "The Myth of Women's Masochism," discussing her fight to prevent this diagnosis from being included, and her (tongue-in-cheek) counterproposal for a diagnosis for overly aggressive males. The book is an interesting look at how the DSM is changed and revised.

Mental illness exists and there are diagnostic categories that are backed by centuries of research and writing. The rapid rise in the number of diagnostic categories reflects both our increasing knowledge of certain aspects of human behaviour and, in many cases, a conscious decision to medicalize behaviour.

So, yes, you're right to be suspicous of the DSM.

hullo
homosexuality is no more believed to be a mental disorder, in the DSM IV and the ICD 10, because it is so common in any society, and social views do change by time, so psychiatric ideas follow them hand in hand.
psychiatry is an ever changing science, it fulfills the need of societal needs and legislation.
sexual preference is related to personal freedom in the free world.

Dr solo

This is a good question. I would say that it doesn't invalidate but it does call into question all things in the DSM. Furthermore, it calls into question the scientific basis behind much of psychology/psychiatry. A lot of what has been written is based solely on opinion and not on scientific studies. Stomach ulcer was another area that was mishandled. In talking with patients of GP doctors, it seems that when they can't identify the cause of an illness, they often suggest that the patient has a psychiatric illness.

Part of the problem is that this area is so primitive that not enough is known to write scientifically about various illnesses. Because of this, a lot of opinion is used to fill in the gaps. It's going to take another fifty years before there is a fairly full understanding of the common disorders.