Group For The Advancement of Psychiatry - Publications

Publications

GAP's first published report (by the Committee on Therapy) was on the "promiscuous and indiscriminate use of electro-shock therapy." GAP's formulated policy to discuss controversial psychosocial issues was announced in 1950, in the Committee on Social Issues' Report, The Social Responsibility of Psychiatry, A Statement of Orientation. In that Report, the Committee noted that two factors had been influential in causing diverse social problems in psychiatry: the role of prejudice in determining attitudes towards social problems and the sparse knowledge about the relationship between society and personality. In this pioneering document, the Committee on Social Issues emphasized the social responsibility of psychiatry. It made a number of suggestions for broadening the conceptual framework of psychiatry to include: "redefinition of the concept of mental illness, emphasizing those dynamic principles which pertain to the person's interaction with society...examination of the social factors which contribute to the causation of mental illness and also influence its course and outcome...consideration of the specific group psychological phenomena which are relevant, in a positive sense, to community mental health...the development of criteria for social action, relevant to the promotion of individual and community mental health." By 1955 the group was advocating an "objective critical attitude should orient the field.

GAP continued to produce position statements on relevant and controversial psychiatric issues such as abortion, drug use, sex crimes, school desegregation, loyalty oaths, nuclear energy, and euthanasia. Its "Report on homosexuality with particular emphasis on this problem in governmental agencies" (1955) criticized "witch hunts" against homosexuals working in the U.S. government. and the purging of homosexuals from the government. GAP reports were concise, published soon after they were written and widely respected and influential.