I have chosen the key-word Homosexuality & the DSM (medical discourse)
DEFINITION: I think it means the intersectionality of mental health, specifically psychiatry, and how it tends to marginalize and pathologize behaviors of queer communities. More specifically, it refers to how homosexuality used to be a diagnosable mental disorder found in the DSM, which is basically the bible of psychiatry and diagnoses mental illness.
PURPOSE: I intend to create a blog post. An example of this format is beauty bloggers, and some of the generic conventions of this format are informality, the language used makes people feel as if the person writing the blog is their friend. A second generic convention is that a blog post is well-researched. You need the reader to believe that you are an authoritative source on the subject. Lastly, a blog post has a call to action, it is made with the intention of accomplishing some task.
CONTENT: I intend to talk about my key-word in relation to the history of the DSM and how mental health care has evolved and what role queerness has in the modern mental health setting.
COURSE THEMATIC: I think that my key concept intersects/overlaps with class in these ways:
- We have talked extensively in this class about the marginalization of queerness and how it buts up against and intersects with heteronormativity. This is really an extension of that into the medical and psychological field.
QUESTIONS: I am struggling with/ cannot seem to figure out/ do not know how to approach getting started. I am overwhelmed with the literature available. I would like more clarification on what exactly needs to be included in the project. I need support with making sure my conventions of writing are correct.
SOURCES: I have decided to use the following five sources, because: they are journals or articles written for and by psychiatrists on how DSM interacted with homosexuality (including its removal) and how to improve the DSM for more inclusivity.
Works Cited
Datta, Vivek, et al. “When Homosexuality Came out (of the DSM).” Mad In America, 18 Aug. 2017, https://www.madinamerica.com/2014/12/homosexuality-came-dsm/.
“The Diagnostic Status of Homosexuality in DSM-III: A Reformulation of the Issues.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 1 Apr. 2006, https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.138.2.210.
Drescher, Jack. “Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality.” Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland), U.S. National Library of Medicine, 4 Dec. 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4695779/.
How LGBTQ+ Activists Got “Homosexuality” out of the DSM. https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-activists-got-homosexuality-out-of-the-dsm/.
“Psychiatry Online.” FOCUS, https://focus.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.focus.18302?cookieSet=1.