Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work. The history of psychiatry and homosexuality illuminates how stigma develops in the professions, how it is linked to cultural values and religious attitudes and how it affects patients. Homosexuality was medicalised as a disorder in the late 19th century and this led to treatments to change it.
Lesbians and gay men were effectively debarred from training in the main psychoanalytical schools in the USA and the UK. Although mainstream psychological treatments to make gay and bisexual people heterosexual fell into disrepute in the s, so-called conversion or reparative treatments took their place and are still practised today. Transgender people have been the target of similar disapproval and attitudes towards them have been even slower to change than those towards lesbians and gay men.
This stigma had consequences on the health, well-being and social inclusion of those who were lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender LGBT. This history suggests we need to examine where psychiatry and psychology are making similar mistakes today.
Keywords: Stigma and discrimination, homosexuality, transgender, psychiatry, psychology. However, it is sometimes forgotten that mental health professionals may hold similar stigmatising attitudes as those held by the general public.
In most societies same-gender behaviour was traditionally regarded as unnatural and morally perverse. It was only in the late 19th century that it came to be regarded in terms of biology and illness. Sexologists such as Magnus Hirschfeld, writing in the early 20th century, attempted to recast same-gender behaviour in scientific terms. Although their intentions were to encourage the idea of same-gender behaviour as a natural human phenomenon, this often led to attempts to diagnose it as a disorder and treat it.
