Mental Health Week in Review June 11-19

We’ve had another big week in Mental Health where we looked at a range of topics, including the ongoing debate as to whether homosexuality is an inborn trait or simply learned and therefore a choice. Researchers utilized sex hormones found in male sweat and female urine to conduct an interesting experiment on the differing reactions of heterosexual and homosexual participant’s brains. This article attracted several reader comments and you can read the articles by clicking on the links below. We also looked at the myths and misconceptions that surround counseling and psychotherapy. What do people really expect when they go … Continue reading

Homosexuality: Inborn or Learned Behavior? (2)

In our previous article on this topic we saw how researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden found that testosterone compounds found in male sweat were attractive to both heterosexual females and homosexual males. Conversely, estrogen compounds found in female urine were attractive to heterosexual males, but not homosexual males. Dean Hamer, a geneticist from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland concluded that “this is one more line of evidence that there’s a biological substring for sexual preference”. In short, when homosexual men inhaled the odor of male sweat, the region of their brain that governs sexual response … Continue reading

Homosexuality: Inborn or Learned Behavior? (1)

Scientists have long debated whether homosexuals are born or bred. Ongoing research by neuroscientists at the Karolinska Institutet, one of Europe’s largest medical universities in Stockholm, Sweden, presents more evidence for the former being the case. Homosexuality has gone from being once classed as a mental illness to being regarded as either a sin or an acceptable variation of human behavior. Whatever your view, research in this area points to a biological origin for homosexual behavior. In the Swedish study, the scientists exposed heterosexual man and women as well as homosexual men to naturally-occurring chemicals containing male and female sex … Continue reading

Federal Ban on Blood Donation Continues

This past Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decided to uphold the federal ban against sexually active gay men donating blood. The ban has been in effect for 25 years, when the AIDS blood scare first began. You probably remember young hemophiliac Ryan White who was infected with HIV in 1984 after receiving a tainted blood treatment. White died at the age of 18 in 1990. Another early victim of tainted blood was actor Paul Michael Glaser’s wife Elizabeth. She contracted HIV after receiving a blood transfusion when giving birth to their first child Ariel. She … Continue reading

A Completely Changed Life

After reading some of the forum posts by tmwhalens, I thought I’d share a story of lives and one marriage that has had more than the usual problems and every day hassles to overcome. Ron Brookman says when he first married he says ‘it was for all the wrong reasons.’ It was more about keeping up appearances and trying to subvert and hide his homosexuality. Ron had two children with his first wife. The marriage was dysfunctional and unhappy. After she left him, from time to time he visited places in search of a homosexual relationship. This was despite the … Continue reading