Gay “Cures” Are Harmful And Don’t Work, Says World’s Largest Body Of Psychiatrists (Duh!)

From: Accidental Bear
by Patrick Strudwick /BuzzFeed LGBT Editor, UK

 The World Psychiatric Association has condemned so-called conversion therapy and called on governments around the world to decriminalize homosexuality.

The largest international organisation for psychiatrists is to publish a statement condemning conversion therapy as unscientific, unethical, ineffective, and harmful, BuzzFeed News can reveal.

In a wide-ranging call to reduce the stigmatization, discrimination, and resulting worsened mental health of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) will formally announce on Tuesday its opposition to any attempts to turn LGBT people heterosexual – known as “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy”.

“There is no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed,” says the WPA’s position statement, which has been supplied to BuzzFeed News.

“Furthermore, so-called treatments of homosexuality can create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish, and they can be potentially harmful. The provision of any intervention purporting to ‘treat’ something that is not a disorder is wholly unethical.”

Although many psychiatric organisations in Western countries, such as the UK and the US, already publicly oppose conversion therapy, the WPA represents over 200,000 psychiatrists in over 118 countries, many of which criminalise homosexuality and, in some cases, condone attempts to “cure” it.

The WPA’s statement, which will likely be seen as controversial by many of its members, says: “A same-sex sexual orientation per se does not imply objective psychological dysfunction or impairment in judgement, stability, or vocational capabilities.” It continues: “[The WPA] acknowledges the lack of scientific efficacy of treatments that attempt to change sexual orientation and highlights the harm and adverse effects of such ‘therapies’.”

The WPA also calls on governments around the world to scrap laws against homosexuality:

“WPA supports the need to de-criminalize same-sex sexual orientation and behavior and transgender gender identity, and to recognize LGBT rights to include human, civil, and political rights.”