The Pros And Cons Of Conversion Therapy

Why Should Conversion Therapy Be Banned

Imagining the situation someone is constantly telling us what to do and think does not seem right to anyone. People are not happy with being told what to do or who to be. This goes especially to everyone whose personal life and their sexuality some parts of our society still have the urge to change or discredit. The practices and treatments that do this are called conversion or reparative therapies. They are a series of various treatments based on conviction that identifying with some sort of LGBT identity is wrong and should be treated as an illness with the main goal of changing person’s sexuality or gender identity. The current situation in the USA does not appear good for these minorities because:

As an example, many people who experienced conversion therapy along with many experts and doctors are stating that these treatments can mess up people's mental health and their mind. The evidence supporting this claim can be seen in many studies. For example, David B. Cruz states that conversion therapies epitomize the danger of several harms to clients, which can result from either psychotherapies or conversion therapies themselves (1351). Another author, Steven Horowitz, claims in his work The Doctrine of Informed Consent Applied to Psychotherapy that even if the therapy works for some people, the side effect mental states can be hard to cope with before reaching the ultimate goal of the treatment (qtd. in Cruz, 1351). This definitely backs up the fact there is more harm than actual use to these therapies. In addition to that, people who are struggling with their sexuality might come to even worse state of mind after undergoing therapy that tells them they are wrong and need to

To demonstrate, here is a short recapitulation of the history of sexual orientation change efforts summarized by the American Psychological Association. Between the years 1960 and 1970 the efforts put into curing homosexuality were very common and sort of normal. Practitioners established treatments like inducing nausea, providing electric shocks or being punished when patient was aroused by some form of same-sex erotic fantasy (Glassgold, 22). Today the form of therapies is more of a talkative one (Mallory, Brown, Conron, 1), which may sound acceptable but it really is not. One can suggest that talking to someone cannot be harmful. That being said thought, we never know what might be going on in the patient's mind and that is why not even the current practices should be