Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T.
Breakthroughs

“SEXUALITY,” wrote the late M. Scott Peck in Glimpses of the Devil (2005), “has to do with creation.” Here lies the basic existential conflict that threatens the mental health of homosexuals. Factors against homosexual behavior, such as social pressures, legal sanctions, and the rise of behaviorism in the 1950s, have caused the development of psychotherapy to make homosexual men heterosexual.

In the Philippines, this has not been heard of. Their application peaked in Great Britain in the 60s and 70s. With this development, homosexuality became a mental condition, a disorder of the mind.

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Three researchers, Annie Barlett (lead), Glenn Smith, and Michael King reviewed mental health practitioners on their own treatments for homosexual orientation. The researchers are from St. George’s University of London and University College London.

Results, published at BMC Psychiatry on March 26, found that only four percent of therapist would attempt to change a client’s sexual orientation if the client asked for such therapy. But 17 percent reported having assisted at least one client to reduce or change his or her homosexual or lesbian feelings. In this group, men were more likely than women, and the older more than the younger, to advice change in sexual orientation.

Counseling was the commonest (66 percent) approach used in the treatment, followed by behavioral therapy (15 percent), general psychotherapy (14 percent), and medical treatment (two percent). Most of these therapists (72 percent) who have provided treatment believed that such therapy must be made available to change sexual orientation.

While mental health practitioners apparently are not yet actively practicing sexual orientation redirect therapy, the need clearly exists. And the reasons in seeking help are the following: confusion about sexual orientation (57 percent); social pressures, including the family (14 percent); mental health difficulties (11 percent); and religious beliefs, heterosexual relationship difficulties, and as victims of abusive relationships (below seven percent).

All practitioners believe that a distressed client in homosexuality justifies (a doctor in) giving an intervention.

One psychotherapist answered: “Where someone had a strong faith, then working to help the persons accept their feelings but manage them appropriately may be the best approach if they felt they would lose God and therefore their life was not worth living.”

The problem with homosexuality or those that homosexuals face are not simply about sexuality, but also of faith and sanity. (Email: zim_breakthroughs@yahoo.com; blog:
http://breakthroughs.today.blogspot.com)