What percentage of kids who undergo “conversion therapy” commit suicide and how does this compare with the percentage of kids who commit suicide for other reasons?
People who have undergone conversion therapy have reported increased anxiety, depression, and in some cases, suicidal ideation. The devastating consequences of conversion therapy are why the Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to ending this practice and defending the rights of individuals harmed by it.
splcenter.org/conversion-therapy
“serious methodological problems in this area of research, such that only a few studies met the minimal standards for evaluating whether psychological treatments, such as efforts to change sexual orientation, are effective”
However, claims by the Family Research Council, Charles Socarides, Joseph Nicolosi, and others of “successful” conversions through reparative therapy are filled with methodological ambiguities and questionable results (for reviews, see Haldeman, 1991, 1994; see also Haldeman’s 1999 review paper is available on the web in HTML and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format). They are also ethically suspect. [Bibliographic references are on a different web page]
In many of these behavior-change techniques, “success” has been defined as suppression of homoerotic response or mere display of physiological ability to engage in heterosexual intercourse. Neither outcome is the same as adopting the complex set of attractions and feelings that constitute sexual orientation.
Many interventions aimed at changing sexual orientation have succeeded only in reducing or eliminating homosexual behavior rather than in creating or increasing heterosexual attractions. They have, in effect, deprived individuals of their capacity for sexual response to others. These “therapies” have often exposed their victims to electric shocks or nausea-producing drugs while showing them pictures of same-sex nudes (such techniques appear to be less common today than in the past).
Another problem in many published reports of “successful” conversion therapies is that the participants’ initial sexual orientation was never adequately assessed. Many bisexuals have been mislabeled as homosexuals with the consequence that the “successes” reported for the conversions actually have occurred among bisexuals who were highly motivated to adopt a heterosexual behavior pattern.
The extent to which people have actually changed their behavior – even within the confines of these inadequate operational definitions – often has not been systematically assessed. Instead, only self reports of patients or therapists’ subjective impressions have been available. More rigorous objective assessments (e.g., behavioral indicators over an extended period of time) have been lacking (Coleman, 1982; Haldeman, 1991, 1994; Martin, 1984).1
Some psychoanalysts claim to have conducted empirical research demonstrating that their “therapies” are able to change gay people into heterosexuals. Their studies have multiple flaws, including a lack of safeguards against bias and a lack of control groups. Rather than having patients evaluated by an independent third party who is unaware of which patients received the “reparative therapy,” these studies are simply compilations of self-reports from psychoanalysts who are attempting to change their patients’ sexual orientation (and who are highly motivated to report “success”).
And even if we accept these studies’ claim that change has occurred, they do not provide any evidence that such change resulted from a particular therapy. Individuals who changed might well have done so anyway, even without therapy.
The second APA paper, presented by Dr. Ariel Shidlo and Dr. Michael Schroeder, reported findings from a study of 202 homosexuals who were recruited through the Internet and direct mailings to groups advocating conversion therapy. Most of the participants (178, or 88%) reported that efforts to change their sexual orientation had failed. Only 6 (3%) achieved what the researchers considered a heterosexual shift. Drs. Shidlo and Schroeder also reported that many respondents were harmed by the attempt to change.
In summary, scientific data are lacking to show that behavior modification techniques effectively change individuals’ sexual orientations from homosexual to heterosexual. The relatively small number of attempts that have been adequately documented appear to have been largely unsuccessful.
Does this mean that no one ever changes his or her orientation from homosexual to heterosexual through the use of such techniques? Not necessarily. It is possible that some individuals who enter such therapies eventually make such a change, although there is no evidence for a cause-and-effect relationship. Those people might have changed their sexual orientation without the therapy.
However, so-called reparative therapy techniques – premised on the assumption that homosexuality is a form of psychopathology – appear to do much more harm than good. And even if conversion therapies were shown to be successful in more than a relative handful of cases, they would remain ethically questionable.
The mainstream view in psychology and psychiatry is that people who are troubled about their homosexual orientation have internalized society’s prejudice against homosexuality, and that the appropriate task of a therapist is to help them to overcome those prejudices and to lead a happy and satisfying life as a gay man or lesbian.
psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/rainbow/html/facts_changing.html
I agree we have no idea what it is like to be in their shoes…