Over the last 30 years increasingly rights and laws have been introduced to protect people that identify as LGBTQIA+. These laws have helped protect them from discrimination within education, work and on the streets. However, one thing has not changed - conversion therapy is still legal.

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Conversion therapy is the emotional and mental abuse of LGBTQIA+ people. This practice is aimed at changing or suppressing the sexuality of a person from LGBT+ to straight, or their gender from transgender or non binary to their biological gender. This harsh and inhumane practice is only illegal in about seven countries throughout the whole world.

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The sexuality and gender of a person which makes up their identity cannot be cured and should not be attempted to be cured. Within Britain a health report was carried out and it concluded that one in twenty LGBT people (5%) had been pressured to go to conversion therapy. This number then rises to 9% of LGBT people aged 18-24 within the black, asian and minority ethnic community, and was 8% disabled LGBT people. Within the transgender community it was one in five (20%). 

 

Other names for conversion therapy: 

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• Gender critical therapy 

• Reparative therapy 

• Ex-gay ministries 

• Sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts

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The practice of conversion therapy can be carried out by anyone regardless of whether they are licensed or not, either as a one to one or within a group setting. There have been reports of practitioners falsifying claims that how the person is feeling in terms of sexuality or gender may be down to the result of childhood trauma or abuse, and sometimes their environment or upbringing.

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As a therapeutic practice there are many issues: it is based on an outdated and false notion that being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness and that it should be cured. Conversion therapy has had strong associations with negative mental health outcomes and higher rates of suicide attempts. 

 

The side effects are: 

 

• Shame 

• Guilt 

• Helplessness 

• Hopelessness 

• Decreased self esteem 

• Depression 

• Suicide 

 

In 2018 a study by The Family Acceptance Project in America found that:

 

1. Rates of attempted suicide by LGBT people whose parents tried to change their sexual orientation were more than double (48%) the rate of LGBT young adults who reported no conversion experiences (22%). 

2. Suicide attempts nearly tripled for LGBT young people who reported both home-based and out-of-home efforts to change their sexual orientation (63%).

3. High levels of depression more than doubled (33%) for LGBT young people whose parents tried to change their sexual orientation compared with those who reported no conversion experiences (16%) and more than tripled (52%) for LGBT young people who reported both home-based and out-of-home efforts to change their sexual orientation. 

4. Sexual orientation change experiences during adolescence by both parents/caregivers and externally by therapists and religious leaders were associated with lower young adult socioeconomic status, less educational attainment, and lower weekly income. 

(The Trevor Project, 2020)

 

Within the UK a 2018 survey had found that 108,000 members of the LGBT community had suggested that 2% had undergone the practice and another 5% had been offered it. Most recently Boris Johnson has commented saying that conversion therapy is “absolutely abhorrent” and “has no place in this country”.