New Obama Administration Report Calls for End to risky “Conversion Therapy”

Following that, in May Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D-CA) introduced the Therapeutic Fraud Act which was the first federal legislation to prohibit the practice of providing conversion therapy to individuals in exchange for monetary compensation or even advertising similar services claiming that sexual orientation or gender identity can be subject to change via so-called therapeutic methods.

“Conversion therapy is child abuse, and the Obama Administration has joined our call to ban its practice once and for all”, said HRC President Chad Griffin.

“We care about all of our young people and we, both individually and collectively, have the responsibility to ensure that they grow up healthy so that they can thrive”, Jarrett added. The practice has been promoted by a few religious groups, but is widely panned as harmful by medical and psychological groups, including the American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Pediatrics.

Four US states and Washington banned the practice among minors and vulnerable adults as of August 2015, the report said, and 21 more states and Congress have considered or are considering bans. “It is unsafe junk science that uses fear and shame to tell young people the only way to find love and acceptance is by changing the very nature of who they are”.

The officials defined the objective of this report, Ending Conversion Therapy: Supporting and Affirming LGBTQ Youth, as providing mental health professionals and families with “accurate information about effective and ineffective therapeutic practices related to children’s and adolescents’ sexual orientation and gender identity”.

The US government has issued a report calling for an end to conversion therapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) minors.

Leaders of national groups, such as Human Rights Campaign and National Center for Lesbian Rights, which have worked with state legislatures and partner groups to ban such practices, praised the report’s findings.

The SAMHSA authors stressed that eliminating conversion therapy is only one step in helping LGBTQ youth lead happy, productive lives. Conversion therapy can exacerbate those risks. “Supportive families, peers, and school and community environments are associated with improved psychosocial outcomes for sexual minority youth”, the report said. But, more importantly, young people are seeing their heroes stand up for them. What is new about this report, said Brian Altman, director of the division of policy innovation at SAMHSA, is that the psychologists and other experts convened for it also came to a consensus about the best ways to help children who may be grappling with gender identity or expression, meaning they may be trans. “Unscrupulous quacks must not be allowed to warp young minds with their harmful pseudoscience”.