Conversion Therapy And Its Effects On The Lgbtq Community

An individual’s sexuality should not define who they are as a person. What is Conversion Therapy? Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy has a range of treatments that are designed in hopes to turn a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual. Conversion therapy is also used in attempts to convert a transgender person’s gender expression to match with the gender given at birth. It is currently banned for minors in 5 states (California, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and Illinois) and the other 45 states have no law against it. Many teens in this current time period are coming out as either lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer. Homosexuality is often seen as a negative effect towards society.

The mental health of individuals in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community is something that is a serious problem. For most of the history of the United States and many different parts of the world LGBT people faced much persecution and in some cases even death. This constant fear of discovery and the pressure that one feels on oneself when “in the closet” can lead to major mental distress. Research has shown that people who identify as LGBT are twice as likely to develop lifetime mood and anxiety disorders (Bostwick 468). This is extremely noticeable the past couple years in the suicides of bullied teens on the basis of sexual identity and expression. The stigma on simply being perceived as LGBT is strong enough to

Following the declassification of homosexuality as a disease in 1973, a variety of methods have been made in attempts to help members of the LGBT community become

Many people from the United States hold the belief that being gay is something that has always been considered to be okay. They believe that it is just a given. Despite people’s current beliefs on the subject, for a very long time, it was something that was widely believed to be taboo. In the past, people were imprisoned due to their sexuality. Regardless, throughout the decades, people have pushed for the widespread acceptance of people who are part of the LGBT community. Today, homophobia still exists in some parts of the United States, but we have come a long way since the early 1900s.

For many years, psychologists described homosexuality as a disorder or a treatable complex. Recently, homosexuality was removed from the DSM and is no longer considered a disorder. The gay population is no longer treated as sick but accepted as a diverse set of individuals. The many distinguishing attributes and characteristics of a gay or lesbian individual are considered to be personality attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore various considerations when counseling members of the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender community (LGBT). When counseling LGBT members, the psychology professional must be aware of various factors that may influence effective treatment. For instance, the historical treatment of the LGBT community by the mental health profession is important to understand in order to make strides at improving institutional attitudes and approaches. Other factors such as community perceptions, interfamily relations and cultural bias are all relevant to successful therapeutic outcomes. This paper aims to discuss these factors in order to present a comprehensive review of the cultural considerations involved with counseling the LGBT community.

Conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, or Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE) has a troubled history within the United States and abroad. Conversion therapy is the use of a variety of means to attempt to change an individual’s sexual or gender orientation. Current practices include inducing vomiting or paralysis while showing a subject homoerotic images, having a subject snap a rubber band on their wrist whenever they have certain thoughts, or using tactics to create shame or aversion to same sex or transgender thoughts. Many established institutes claim that the therapy does or doesn't work and offer contradicting evidence for their position. The Movement Advancement Project, a group dedicated to providing research for the advancement of LGBT people, states in an infographic that nine states, plus the District of Columbia and a handful of municipalities have banned conversion therapy from being provided by licensed medical professionals to minors (“Kids” 1). Based on the established evidence and the overwhelming number of psychologists and sociologist that disavow conversion therapy, along with the multitude of horror stories from children who were persuaded, or forced, to participate by their parents, the federal government should ban conversion therapy for all minors.

Christianity and Judaism also have large groups that support the therapy. The religious purpose of Christian conversion groups are literally just to keep gays from having the same rights as anyone else. Mike Davidson, is a well known gay conversion therapist, and in April 2015, he has an interview with BBC News’ Victoria Derbyshire, and conversion therapy victim, Patrick Strudwick. When asked about how many people he had converted in a year, he deflected the question a lot, but eventually admitted to only have ‘converted’ three people. It is very difficult and rare to find people who have truly been converted to gay or not. Conversion therapy forces the incorrect principle that LGBT youth are wrong for being who they are, which Christian and Judaism organizations do not realize. In 2015, one of the largest jewish gay conversion therapy groups, JONAH, was shut down under a New Jersey law signed by Chris Christie. JONAH was also made to pay $3.5 million in legal fees in an attempt to ‘apologize’ for the damage they caused. JONAH also had a letter in 2012 signed by 200 jewish rabbis that stated they were in support of the conversion therapy movement. In response, the director of a large jewish LGBT group said that he and many others were fearful if the debate about conversion therapy could be discussed logically again under the new U.S. government. There are, of course, the people in

The study that provides evidence that conversion therapy is both ineffective and harmful is provided by the American Psychological Association (APA) in a report entitled, Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. The report concluded that, "efforts to change sexual

It seems to me that people have not taken the time to educate themselves on the issue, which is why I cringed, both internally and externally, when Asif made the statement regarding homosexuality as a choice. So much research has been done and will continue to be done on this topic, that it is important as future clinicians, as well as human beings, that we stay up to date with it, in order to better understand our clients and the issues that they are faced with, which will ultimately help us be more respectful when treating them. Of course this is not the only subject where this can be applied, it can be used in the context of any issues being faced by our clients. For example, women’s right to equality, is another issue being discussed a lot recently that may come up while working with

There are many methods of SOCE ranging from medical to religious. Some SOCE interventions that we see today are; aversion therapy (which often includes electroshock treatments), conversion/reparative therapy (both are a type of talk therapy), and transformational ministries (which are religion based). SOCE therapy is often aimed at young people and is proven to cause things like; depression, physical or emotional trauma, suicide, substance abuse, isolation, and a variety self destructive

In light of the 2016 election, there have been some question as to weather or not conversion therapy is a suitable and ethical practice. Conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy or ex-gay therapy, is used to try and change a persons sexual orientation and/or a persons gender identity. United states President Donald J. Trump has not yet said anything about his views on the matter, however, Vice-President elect Mike Pence has ‘advocated diverting taxpayer dollars to so-called conversion therapy’ and stated, during one of the republican debates, "Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” (Chris Nichols- Politifact) He also supported reparative therapy when he started to run for congress in 2000. Conversion therapy, unlike many other therapies, can be extremely harmful to a person, especially a minor’s, mental health and self esteem; Therefor, conversion therapy should be illegal in all 50 states because it puts lgbtq+ youth at a greater risk of experiencing high levels of depression and suicide, is often biased to fit one set of religious beliefs and is ‘unethical’.

Beginning in the 1950s, conversion and reparative therapy began. As stated in the book Hear Us Out by Nancy Garden "... in addition to supposedly being morally evil, homosexuality was widely believed to be an illness. To "cure" them, gays and lesbians were sometimes subjected to painful electroshock treatments or to aversion therapy. ... You may have heard of the modern-day version of 'curing' homosexuality - 'reparative therapy,' which is practiced by

Conversion therapy is a treatment given to homosexual, bisexual and transgender people. It’s main goal is to change your sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Some people go to it in hopes of being “fixed” because the environment and people around them have convinced them that who they are and what they feel is wrong.

Then later in 1991 the World Health Organization removed the term homosexuality from its list of disorders. Therefore, those clinicians, social workers and therapists who continue to consider homosexuality as a disorder only do it based on their political, personal, and religious convictions (Woodward, 1997).