Nationwide ban sought after new study reveals 13% of trans-people in US are put through cruel, unethical gender conversion therapies
Gender conversion therapy is dangerous and discredited yet a terrifying number of transgender Americans are subjected to it, a study published in the American Journal Of Public Health has revealed.
Overall, 13.5% of transgender individuals across all US states have been subjected to conversion therapy, the study has found. Dr. Alex Keuroghlian from Fenway Health, who is a co-author on the study, called for a ban on such practices in the US. “This study shows an alarming lifetime prevalence of exposure to gender identity conversion efforts by professionals across the United States, including all 50 U.S. states and as recently as 2010-15," he told MEA World Wide.
Even though the uselessness of conversion therapies have been concluded by the American Psychological Association more than a decade ago, in 2007, they still continue to be practiced. They've also been declared unethical by medical organizations, including The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. "Given that state-level legislation to ban conversion efforts has been blocked in the past based on claims that conversion efforts to do occur throughout the U.S., we hope these findings can help ongoing legislative efforts to ban conversion efforts by professionals in all 50 states," he added.
In South Carolina, 9.4% of transgender individuals were exposed to this therapy while the number was higher in Wyoming, at 25% along with 1.2% in Alaska and 16.3% in South Dakota.
Researchers at the institute used data from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Williams Institute of UCLA for the study and said that the number of transgender individuals who the therapy has been attempted on is approximately 187,923.
Sexual orientation conversion therapy has been banned in many states, including New York and Washington DC and in 13 other states for minors. The concept of the therapy, as the Williams Institute report from 2018 states, stems from the thought that being LGBT is abnormal. The report also estimated that 698,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 59 have undergone conversion therapy at some point in their lives, 350,000 of them as adolescents.
The numbers are shocking for minors. The report estimated that 20,000 teenagers ages 13 to 17 would receive conversion therapy before the age of 18. At the time of the study, the practice was prevalent in 41 states.
Conversion therapists use a variety of shaming, emotionally traumatic or physically painful stimuli to make their victims associate those with their LGBTQ identities. In the past, some mental health professionals resorted to extreme measures such as institutionalization, castration, and electroconvulsive shock therapy to stop people from being LGBTQ. Some therapists use aversive conditioning, wherein a sense of aversion or dislike is paired with undesirable behavior.
The high-profile advocates of conversion therapy today tend to be fundamentalist Christian groups and other organizations which use canonical justification for the therapy rather than speak of homosexuality as an illness. Among the largest advocates of the therapy is the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality.