Counseling The Homosexual Population

(Drescher, 1999) This acceptance was not even conceivable during the times in which homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Even with this wide acceptance, homosexuality is once again being rehashed as a mental illness. Currently, there are mental health practitioners who are attempting to remedicalize homosexuality as an illness or at least a deficit. The treatment would then be to attempt psychodynamic cures that attempt to change homosexual attractions into the more widely accepted heterosexual ones. (Drescher, 1999) While these practitioners are a minority, the main organizations of mental health professionals are unanimous, in fact, the American Psychiatry Association asserts(Nave 2000): .
             The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior. . . . The American Psychiatric Association opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as 'reparative' or 'conversion' therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon a prior assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation there is no published evidence supporting the efficacy of reparative therapy as a treatment to change one's sexual orientation.
             The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of orders in 1975, the National Association of Social Workers removed it from their list in 1977, and American Psychoanalytic Association removed it from their list in 1991.(Nave, 2002) The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is the major organization of mental health professionals that promotes efforts to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals. According to Nave(2002), NARTH does not require any credentials to join and hosts "650 members, (a negligible number compared, e.g., to the American Psychological Association's 151,000 licensed psychologists and the American Psychiatric Association's 40,000 licensed psychiatrists)" In fact, he goes on to state that it has been completely renounced by the mental health care establishment in the United States.