A Perception of Homosexuality

> How long ago was it that lesbians and gay men were officially considered to be suffering from a mental illness simply because of their sexuality? If you’d asked me that question a few months ago, I would have probably guessed that it has been at least 30 years, if not 50.

The amazing thing is that this is very far from the truth. Difficult though it is to believe, it is a documented fact that the British Government did not remove homosexuality from its International Classification of Disease list (the list used by, amongst other things, the Mental Health Services in Britain to determine mental illnesses) until 1994. In other words, until just 12 years ago, the British Government’s official stance on homosexuality was that it was a mental disorder which might have a cure. Unusually, this was a good 20 years behind the USA, a country which has historically been way behind the UK as far as equality for homosexuals is concerned. In actual fact, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973 – very late by most people’s standards, but not when compared to the UK.

The inability on the part of the British Government to act sooner could be seen as an oversight, of course. They had, after all, already legalised homosexual relations between men over 21 in 1967, and in the same year that they removed homosexuality from their list, they also reduced the age of consent for male homosexual sex from 21 to 18. However, it seems that the Government made the decision not in a kind of “Oops, we forgot about that one…” moment, but that they deliberately waited for an official DoH sanction of their actions. Just before the decision to remove us from the list, a Department of Health (DoH) document was published entitled: “Health of the nation key area handbook: mental illness”, which included the first ever reference to lesbian and gay mental health issues in DoH policy – in other words the DoH was stating publicly that lesbian and gay people had mental health issues completely separate from their homosexuality. They could be mentally ill despite and not because of their sexuality. Interestingly, all of the early research into homosexuality was undertaken using subjects who were already resident in mental hospitals, making it not that surprising that the psychologists concluded that homosexuality itself must be a mental illness. In the past, homosexuals were subjected to some of the most horrific therapies imaginable to enable them to be “cured” and therefore conform to the heterosexual model of society. These included lobotomies (where part of the brain was removed to pacify a patient or reduce their sexual desire), aversion therapy (where patients were shown pictures of naked same-sex models and given strong electric shocks to try and make their brains associate homosexual desire with pain), castration, breast amputations and many more. Pioneering psychologists, such as Alfred Kinsey (who published studies into human sexuality in 1948 and 1953), actually did their research on homosexuals who were not in mental hospitals as well. This, along with the overwhelming evidence that these drastic therapies were not “curing” homosexuals at all, began the process which led to both the American and UK declassifications. Unfortunately, like in any well-established profession, the process of change was painfully slow. It is a sobering to think that there must have been many hundreds of homosexuals in the UK alone who were subjected to homophobia and treatments simply because mental health professionals refused to accept the findings of the research of psychologists like Kinsey.

Sadly, even after 1994 (as many of us know from first hand experience), homosexuals were still being demonised and treated as mentally ill. For lesbians, this was particularly true when it came to divorce or custody battles over children. One woman I spoke to lost custody of her children in 1994, and says she was treated “like I was mentally ill” by her ex-husband and her family. Another woman I spoke to was taken to see a counsellor by her mother in the hope that she could be cured, and there are countless other documented examples of this going on for many years after the 1994 declassification, even up to the present day. > I have discovered whilst doing my research that the treatment of homosexuals in the mental health system in 2006 can still be extremely homophobic, even though homosexuality is no longer officially recognised as a mental illness.

In a recent fact sheet produced by the mental health charity, MIND, it is stated that:

“…..there is evidence that the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness has had very little effect upon the attitudes and practice of counsellors and therapists…between 25-65 per cent of gay people seek counselling at some stage of their lives, and up to 50 per cent of these individuals report discontent with their experiences.”

This same document also states that there is evidence that homosexuality continues to be referred to as a mental disorder in some psychiatric texts and “anecdotal evidence shows that homosexuality continues to be thought of as a mental illness per se by society in general and by some mental health professionals.”

It doesn’t help that homosexuals are more likely to suffer from mental illness anyway. The pressures of family, society, coming out, internalised homophobia etc mean that the percentage of homosexual people suffering from recognised mental disorders in the UK is much higher than the national average. Given that statistic, it is hardly surprising that many mental health professionals still regard homosexuality as a mental disorder. The worrying rise of the religious right has also led to more vocal, public pronouncements by so-called “professionals” that we are all just mentally ill and can be cured. It is also worth mentioning that there is still a more general form of homophobia within the mental health system (and indeed within the health system as a whole in Britain). There are substantiated accounts of homosexuals being sectioned (detained under the Mental Health Act – used in cases where people are considered to be a danger to themselves or others) as an emergency, and their partners were not even told that they had been sectioned, let alone where they were or what was going to happen to them. This is something that the Civil Partnership Act should change (for those of us who decide to register) as it automatically makes your partner your next of kin, meaning that you would have to be informed if your partner was in hospital, and also that you can make all decisions regarding their care if they are unable to make these decisions for themselves.

Mercifully, the “bad old days” of electric shock therapy, castration, breast removal etc are long gone. A great deal has changed within the mental health system, as is shown by the fact that no more lesbians and gay men are subjected to treatment just because they are homosexual. Although there are undoubtedly still many homophobic practitioners within the mental health system (as there are homophobes within every profession), they are becoming a less vocal minority. This is mainly due to changes in the law which mean that homosexuals have more rights and the wherewithal to complain about our treatment if we feel it is necessary to do so. Organisations like MIND, LYSIS (Lesbian Youth Support and Information Service) and PACE (an organisation that promotes lesbian and gay health and well-being) are making great strides in educating health professionals in how to deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered clients, and the outlook is good.

My own personal experience (albeit very low on the scale of mental health treatment) also shows a significant change. When I turned to the NHS for help with counselling when I was in my early 20s (ten years ago) I did not come across any homophobia at all. There was perhaps a lack of understanding of lesbian and gay issues, and eventually I chose to see a lesbian counsellor, but this was my own personal decision, and not because I felt that the NHS had let me down in any way.

Change has happened, and there is more to come. I feel that it is very important that we, as lesbians, don’t forget all those who went before us and fought for the equalities we now have. This is particularly true within the mental health services. Lesbians and gay men had their lives ruined and even died from attempts to cure them of their “illness”, women lost their children and were committed to mental hospitals when there was essentially nothing wrong with them, and even after 1994 couples could be forced apart when one was sectioned (with, in some cases, their partner never being able to find out where they had gone), and many homosexuals were forced to attend therapy sessions to try and “cure” them. I feel it is also important for us to remember that the equalities we have now are very recent, with most of them only having come about since the present government came into power. I hope we can now label periods like the one I have described in this article as “history”, and that we can all look forward to many other inequalities being added to that list in the future.

Liz Terry (From Velvet Issue 8)