History desk · reviewed
Mental health history, with the receipts attached
This history desk reconstructs specific decisions from dated records instead of turning the past into brand atmosphere. Each exhibit leads with the jurisdiction, time period, primary evidence, limits, and next source to inspect. The first exhibit follows the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 DSM decision through 1987. It can establish what institutions recorded and changed; it cannot compress every person’s experience or settle disputed causation. Start with the exhibit, then open the original records beside it.
Editorial charter
- Scope
- Bounded events in the history of mental health classification, care, rights, institutions, and practice. Dates and jurisdictions are explicit.
- Source order
- Original records and contemporary documents first; institutional archives second; peer-reviewed or National Academies synthesis for context; tertiary summaries only as discovery leads, never final authority.
- Attribution
- Every consequential claim points to a titled source with an access date. Quotations stay short and are attributed to the original speaker or document.
- Disputed claims
- Competing explanations remain visible. The page separates what a record proves from what it cannot prove and does not turn sequence into causation.
- Corrections
- Corrections change the visible review date and add a note identifying the claim, prior wording, replacement, evidence, and date.
- Prohibited conversion tactics
- No pop-up, countdown, lead form, member pitch, sales rail, fake urgency, or “find a therapist now” interruption appears inside an exhibit. A contextual directory link is allowed only when it helps answer the reader’s next question.
Flagship exhibit · 1952–1987 · United States
What changed when homosexuality came out of the DSM?
The American Psychiatric Association's December 1973 action removed homosexuality itself from DSM-II, but it did not erase the diagnostic legacy in one step. A narrower replacement remained, the membership referendum followed in 1974, and a related diagnosis persisted until 1987.
For the wider chronology, continue to the nine-era Archive. Its job is orientation; the exhibits do the narrower source work.