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Article: A big step for mental health: thirty years after homosexuality was declassified as a mental disorder, a gay man takes the helm of a major health association.(Behind the Headlines)(Mark Pope, American Counseling Association)(Interview)
- Article from:
- The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)
- Article date:
- December 9, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Regent Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973. Almost 30 years later, the American Counseling Association, a professional group with 52,000 members nationwide, elected Mark Pope as its president--the first openly gay head of a major mental health association.
The revealing nature of that coincidence is not lost on Pope, an associate professor of counseling and family therapy at the University of Missouri's St. Louis campus. "I represent a final and total repudiation of that past," he says.
The 51-year-old Pope, whose long career includes the creation of counseling program ...