World Psychiatric Association To Get Its First Gay President of Indian Origin

Dinesh Bhugra, an Indian-born British man, is soon going to head the World Psychiatric Association. Bhugra, who is also gay, is currently the president-elect of the World Psychiatric Association and is also Professor of Mental Health and Diversity at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. He has also been the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the past. He attended the medical school at Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, India.

Bhugra will become the president of the World Psychiatric Association next year and remains so till 2017. He will be the first gay president of the association which represents over 180,000 psychiatrists worldwide. He also believes that the profession should apologise to gay people for afflicting the damage in the past. Speaking to The Guardian, he told, “I think we ought to be apologising for all of the areas, not just one bit – like the treatment of women.” He is also concerned about the mental well being of gay people. “There are still countries where it’s seen as an illness. We need to make a stand,” he said

It was in 1973 that for the first time the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. Homosexuality was officially classified as a mental disorder by APA in 1953 in the first edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Later, in 1990, the General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) also removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders.