Few people know the civil rights struggle of how the diagnosis of homosexuality evolved and was finally deleted from psychiatry's official nomenclature. Over the years, many people suffered severe psychological injury by the very people who were ostensibly there to help them. Some of this tragic legacy continues today.

This multi-media presentation begins in the 1950’s and takes the audience through the tumultuous 60’s and 70’s up to the present to demonstrate the legacy and implications of psychiatry’s once implacable position that “homosexuality is treatable psychopathology.”

Attendees will see a scholarly but compelling power point presentation, view clips of once popular movies, and hear audio interviews from gay activists and establishment psychiatrists of that era, to see how internalized prejudicial attitudes affect everyone, including those who come asking for help and those who provide treatment.

William S. Meyer, MSW, is the Director of Training for the Department of Social Work and is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Ob/Gyn at Duke University Medical Center. He practices in Duke’s high-risk obstetrics clinic and he has been a supervisor