TL;DR
- “Conversion therapy” is the attempt to change, suppress or discourage someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The word “therapy” is a misnomer — no major medical or psychological body recognises it as legitimate treatment.
- It is rarely a clinic. Far more often it is religious settings, family pressure, and informal coercion — and far more often quiet and sustained than dramatic.
- It isn’t only about turning someone straight or cisgender. A large part of it is pressure to suppress, hide, or not act on who you are.
- The UK’s major psychological and medical bodies hold that these practices — for both sexual orientation and gender identity — are unethical, potentially harmful, and unsupported by evidence.
- Galop’s UK survey found nearly one in five LGBT+ people affected — far more among trans and non-binary people — most often by their own family.
The phrase “conversion therapy” is everywhere this week, because the government has finally published a draft law to ban it. But in conversation after conversation, I’ve found that a lot of people — including people who broadly support a ban — aren’t sure what the term actually refers to. They picture something rare, clinical, and obviously monstrous. The reality is more ordinary and more common than that, which is exactly why it has been so hard to legislate against. So before any of the law makes sense, it’s worth being plain about what the thing itself is.
It was never therapy
Start with the word, because the word does a lot of quiet work. “Therapy” implies care, a clinician, a problem being treated. None of that is true here. Conversion practice is any sustained attempt — an intervention, a course of counselling, a programme of prayer — carried out with the predetermined aim of changing, suppressing or discouraging a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The outcome is decided in advance. The person on the receiving end is not being helped toward their own answer; they are being moved toward someone else’s. Exploratory, person-centred therapy, by contrast, does not predetermine an outcome — which is exactly what makes it a different thing.
The word “therapy” is a misnomer: no major medical or psychological body recognises these practices as legitimate treatment. Many practitioners and survivors prefer the term “conversion practices,” which drops the flattering disguise. Throughout this piece I use both, but the second is the more honest one.
What it actually looks like
The picture most people carry — a sinister clinic, electrodes, something from another era — describes the rarest version. The common version is much quieter.
Conversion practices happen most often in religious settings, in families, and in informal community pressure, not in licensed healthcare. They run from talking therapies and counselling, through intensive prayer, exorcism and “deliverance,” all the way to coercion, threats, and abuse. And the goal is not always to flip someone to straight or cisgender. A great deal of it is aimed at getting a person to suppress what they are — to stay silent, to not act on it, to perform a version of themselves that other people find acceptable.
That matters, because it’s the quiet, sustained form — not the dramatic one — that most people actually encounter. It often arrives gently, sometimes from people who sincerely believe they are helping. That is not a softening detail. It is one reason these practices so often go unrecognised for what they are, and can continue for years.
What the evidence says
There is no credible evidence that conversion practices can safely or effectively change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Instead, the published evidence consistently associates them with increased psychological distress and poorer mental health outcomes.
This isn’t a fringe position. Through a joint Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy, the UK’s major psychological and medical bodies — among them the British Psychological Society, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Psychoanalytic Council and NHS England — set out that conversion therapy, in relation to both sexual orientation and gender identity, is unethical, potentially harmful, and unsupported by evidence. First published in 2015 for sexual orientation, it was extended to gender identity in 2017. The professional consensus, in other words, is not that these practices are risky but effective. It’s that they don’t work and they wound.
And the consensus is not only British. The World Psychiatric Association — the global body for the profession — has likewise stated that there is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed, and that offering to “treat” something which is not a disorder is wholly unethical and potentially harmful.
Who it happens to
More people than you’d think. In its UK survey of LGBT+ people, the anti-abuse charity Galop found that nearly one in five — 18% — had been subjected to someone trying to change, “cure” or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity, rising to 43% of trans and 36% of non-binary respondents. A majority of survivors said the attempts came from their own family. The pattern that emerges is not the clinic of the popular imagination but the home, the congregation, and the community.
That is why the question of who a ban covers is never academic.
So that’s the thing itself: not rare, not always loud, rarely a clinic, and built on a claim about people that simply isn’t true. Once you can see it clearly, the law makes a lot more sense — including where it falls short. In the next piece, I read the government’s draft Bill and what it actually does about all this.
Sources
- Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK (first published 2015; extended to gender identity in 2017).
- Galop, “There was nothing to fix: LGBT+ survivors’ experiences of conversion practices.”
- World Psychiatric Association, position statement on conversion therapy (sexual orientation).
