I did a couple of searches to see if this question has been asked recently, and I did not find anything. I am not really asking if this is true, however. I do not believe it to be, personally. I am in the “born that way” camp.
Last night, in a discussion regarding homosexuality, someone just matter of factly stated, “being gay is a mental illness.” It really bothered me, because I can’t stand when people state their opinions as fact.
I don’t see that happening around here too often. Is there anything that I could have said last night to get my message across nicely that she shouldn’t go around spouting that crap without including some extra words in there somewhere that go something like this: “This is my belief, but YMMV…”
You can always point out that the people who study and categorize mental illnesses (that is, the experts) disagree: homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1974.
Understand that I am not anti-gay in any slightest way, but I can follow the arguments that it is a mental aberration. The purpose of sex is procreation/continuation of the species; if you are wired to be attracted to a form of sex that is non-procreative, I think it’s fair to say there is “something wrong” with you at a gross instinctual level. Put it this way: if we were to develop a breed of cattle that had some delightful characteristic like being 100% filet mignon but the males refused to hump anything but each other, it would be considered a genetic flaw.
That there is some percentage among us whose attraction/love/lust/sexuality is non-procreative is neither here nor there in the real world; there are people who don’t contribute to the next generation for many reasons. But yes, I think being hard-wired, or emotionally/mentally influenced into non-procreative sexual interest, could be classified as an aberration.
Not to compare the two in any way but is pedophilia a mental illness? I honestly don’t know if some people are born that way or if it is known that some event triggers an attraction to children. I just wonder if the APA has concluded homosexuality is not a mental illness because the activity doesn’t harm anyone.
We know that homosexuality is “abnormal” in the sense that the vast majority of people are not homosexual. We also know that sexual attraction is a mental function. I think most people can agree that we don’t choose who we are attracted to. If the brain of a homosexual is wired differently does that count as an illness?
Yorick, my extremely simple understanding of mental illness is that to be considered as such, it has to interfere with your ability to function on a day to day basis. Being or acting gay is not in and of itself harmful to yourself or others, but the same is not true of pedophilia.
Psychiatrists considered it a mental illness at one time. That hasn’t been the case in decades and there’s little reason to think of it that way.
An aberration is not an illness. You could call left handedness an aberration, but it sure isn’t an illness. This is usually the kind of mistake people make in these discussions: just because something is uncommon or unusual doesn’t mean it’s an illness or bad or (as we see in other threads) “anti-evolutionary” somehow. Variety is the spice of life and kind of important in evolution, isn’t it? For a mental status to be an illness it also has to cause distress or disability. And no, “gays can’t reproduce” doesn’t count. They can.
But a mental illness is more than just an aberration. It is a way of thinking that causes significant harm to your way of life or that of others. It requires that there be something about being gay that actually hurts you to the point that you would want to stop being gay*. Or that, somehow, you being gay puts you at risk for hurting other people.
If mental illness was just a mental aberration, there would be no chance at having objective criteria. There would always be people who say that a certain action is an aberration, even if those people were perfectly happy thinking that way.
Plus, arguments based on what we evolved to do are silly. We didn’t evolve to use computers, either.
*And, no, wanting to stop being gay simply because other people don’t like you being gay doesn’t count. It has to be something inherent about being gay that bothers you. Hence why conversion therapy is not considered a valid psychological treatment. Well, that and it doesn’t work–psychology, like other sciences, is quite pragmatic that way.
This extremely simple explanation is extremely confusing. Being attracted to children does not interfere with your ability to function on a day to day basis. Yes, acting on that attraction will harm someone but I can’t believe that is the defining characteristic. Assuming that, and I certainly don’t know this to be the case, pedophilia and homosexuality are both caused by brain wiring then it seems absurd to call one an illness but not the other.
This seems to be the best way to explain it. A difference is not an illness. Hopefully someone more educated in this will show up but I tend to think of an illness as something that can be fixed (i.e. neurotrasmitter levels or hormone imbalance) as opposed to something that is just “different” from normal behavior.
I didn’t say it was a mental illness; I don’t agree that it is, at least, not in any way other than the most extreme form of this overall argument (e.g., any variation from defined behavior is due to mental fault).
OTOH, it gets a bit semantically challenging to define the difference between aberration and illness. If you’re out to prove that being gay does no harm, your definitions are one thing; if you’re convinced homosexuals degrade the state of the human race, they’re another. Or, as in this thread, if the discussion is over whether the proclivity for same-gender attraction is an indication of some flaw in a person’s mental makeup, it’s yet another.
I’ll put it as clearly as I can: I don’t think having a percentage of gay humans among us makes the slightest difference to the species, culture or any greater population. (Slightest negative difference, at least.) But if you’re going to look at the issue clinically, being gay is a counterproductive trait as significant as any other mental flaw that limits progressive interaction with the local population.
So if this is a clinical/scientific discussion, the answer is one thing; if it’s an emotional/social discussion, another.
Yes, yes, and if god had meant us to fly etc. If you’re going to pick mid-20th century humanity as your starting point, say so; I think limiting the discussion to the narrow range of what post-Industrial Revolution people might do or think is self-cancelling.
Mental illnesses cover both thinking and behavior. I have no idea how psychiatrists classify this stuff, but if you can’t stop yourself from doing something like abusing children, that could be called a mental illness. I don’t think we know for a fact that pedophiles are born that way. When it comes to people being gay, the “born this way” thing is close enough for day to day life for us non-scientists, but the reality is that human sexuality is a little more complicated than that and there’s no one thing that makes people gay or straight as far as we know. It’s a combination of several different factors. The same probably goes for things like attraction to children- it pretty much has to.
It probably does. But then, you’d have received a different response if you’d made that point instead of responding to a discussion of mental illness by talking about an aberration and leaving it to others to explain that aberration doesn’t equal illness. You left the implication sitting there instead of addressing it. At the margins it may well be hard to tell the difference, but I think most of us now agree that being gay doesn’t pose this particular semantic challenge.
You seem to assume that a pedophile is unable to control his behavior while a homosexual (or a heterosexual for that matter) can. I would submit that the abuse by pedophiles derives from a lack of available sexual partners. Imagine one gay guy in a country entirely populated by straights who has no way to express himself sexually. I’m fairly certain this person would end up doing something that could be classified as “abuse” to satisfy a very strong urge at some point in his life. Would you then consider homosexuality a mental illness?
My point here is that we cannot identify something as a mental illness just because the lack of opportunity results in abuse…unless you can make the case that the pedophile’s impulses are somehow stronger to contain than yours or mine.
Mental illnesses do not have a firm definition, in the DSM or anywhere else. Agencies that treat the mentally ill typically provide a few branches of services, typically you see: behavioral disorder, developmental disorder, and substance abuse disorder are commonly three different “pillars” of service offered by your typical state agency.
Behavioral disorder is a catch-all term that most would associate with concepts like “having mental illness” or “being insane” etc. The actual DSM diagnoses that the behavioral disorder people handle will range from things like OCD and anorexia to schizophrenia. Developmental disorders typically cover what common people would call “mental retardation” (an official term until the most recent DSM btw.) This includes things like persons with FAS, down’s syndrome, and then other things not as clearly associated with the popular culture term “retarded”, conditions like autism spectrum disorders. Substance abuse is pretty straightforward, that’s your drug and alcohol addicts primarily, although many states have some tobacco cessation programs going on as well often funded through I believe the big multi-billion dollar tobacco settlements.
Many States treat/handle TBI patients under the developmental disorder “stack” as well.
This seems to be true. I googled the definition of mental illness and most of the results are somewhat circular. Here’s one:
“any disease of the mind; the psychological state of someone who has emotional or behavioral problems serious enough to require psychiatric intervention”
Here’s one from Mayo:
“Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors.”
I’m not assuming it. That’s my view based on the little bit I know about the subject. It seems like some people who abuse children can’t help themselves.
If you mean that people molest children because they can’t find an adult to have sex with them, you’re wrong. Go ahead and find a cite for your view if you can, but I think you’ll find there are plenty of married or otherwise non-single people who abuse kids.
That’s not the argument, but I don’t think this follows anyway.
The terminology is of historical note, most States have transitioned their agencies to using names like “Behavioral Health Department” or whatever, because they view themselves as treating “disorders of behavior.” That allows them to sidestep more loaded terms like “mental illness” or “mental retardation” which have negative political connotations and in a sense aren’t as directly apt to the treatment. Professionals in this field are not concerned with categorizing people for no reason in any case, they’re concerned with persons who have disorders that cause behavioral problems.
For that reason it makes perfect sense that homosexuality was removed from the diagnostic manuals. It has been both socially and medically determined that whatever behavioral problems homosexuality cause are not really of the variety that psychiatrists and treatment agencies should be dealing with. Homosexual behavior is unpopular with some segment of society but that isn’t the same as it being a “problem behavior.” People with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or such have genuine behavioral “problems” that cause significant, obvious and observable problems to themselves and others. Often in the form of making bad decisions that put themselves or others in risk of harm.
Homsexuality, not associated with medically relevant behavioral problems, and also not treatable by any recognized medicine would have no place in a diagnostic manual. The DSM is there to provide codes that agencies and professionals can use to purposes of tracking payment, insurance reimbursement etc. It’s not there to make greater philosophical or biological arguments.
I’ve said this in the past on the issue of homosexuality and mental illness and think it stands today: