Alfred M. Freedman, a prominent New York psychiatrist who in 1973, as president of the American Psychiatric Association, played a key role in ending the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness, died April 17 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

He was 94 and died of complications from surgery to treat a fractured hip.

In April 1972, The Washington Post reported that the 15,000-member American Psychiatric Association had been taken over by “a group of young dissidents” who thought it was the APA’s responsibility to speak out on the controversial social issues of the day, including racism, war, and treatment of gay men and lesbians.

Among the dissidents’ allies was Freedman, a respected authority on substance abuse treatment who chaired the psychiatry department at New York Medical College and had co-authored a widely used psychiatry textbook.

He ran for president of the association and won by three votes out of more than 9,100.

Chief among the issues dividing the APA was the association’s policy toward homosexuality, which at the time was listed as a perversion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders II.

Activists inside and outside the APA agitated for a policy change, and Freedman enlisted Columbia University psychiatrist Robert Spitzer to head a task force studying the issue. When Spitzer proposed a resolution to stop calling homosexuality an illness, Freedman offered his hearty endorsement.