Mike Freer wants to stamp out conversion therapy, but, he told BuzzFeed News, he needs LGBT people who've been subjected to such "cures" to give testimony.

Nicholas Chinardet

Some refer to attempts by therapists to turn people straight as "gay cures". Mostly the practice is known as "conversion therapy" and has been used on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people for decades. But every major mental health body in Britain and the USA condemns it as harmful. And now a Conservative MP is hoping to banish conversion therapy for good – and is asking the public for help. Mike Freer, MP for Finchley and Golders Green, has unveiled plans to try to stamp out the controversial treatment by introducing state regulation for all therapists. Freer told BuzzFeed News he is seeking to introduce legislation against aversion therapy, a largely historical method in which mental health practitioners use electric shocks or nausea-inducing medication to try to suppress a patient's sexuality or gender identity. To advance his plans, he is calling for testimonies from LGBT people who have experienced the treatments, particularly conversion therapy, to demonstrate that it is carried out in this country – even though both academic studies and journalistic exposes have already highlighted it. "We need to be able to say [to the Department of Health], ‘Look, here is the hard evidence: There are people who have been referred for some form of conversion therapy, whether through the NHS or not,’" he said. "So if anybody has been through the process, we want them to come forward."

Studies have shown that the majority of people who undergo conversion therapy are left with worsened mental health as a result – leaving many disinclined to speak out. But Freer said that doing so now could be instrumental in putting an end to such treatments. "People can remain anonymous if that’s what they wish, and if they don’t that’s equally helpful," he said, "but they need to come forward because if people start to speak out then that combination of voices is much more powerful than people like me on the sidelines saying it’s an issue, because others can simply say, ‘Well, prove it.’" To help Freer collate the responses, Stonewall, the LGBT rights organisation, has set up a page on its website where people can submit their testimony. Freer said both aversion and conversion therapy are "harmful" examples of "quackery", because "you can't convert somebody from something that is not convertible". "The easier bit is to simply outlaw aversion therapy – where you can categorically say ‘that is illegal’ and specify the attempt to change someone’s sexuality by the administering of drugs or electrodes," he said.

Mike Freer

He added: "The hardest part is how you stop people behind closed doors from saying, 'I can talk you out of being gay.' That’s what I want to achieve." However, Freer hopes that bringing all counsellors and psychotherapists under a statutory body that would regulate them under one code of conduct and disciplinary procedure would be a powerful preventative measure.

"You have to make statutory regulation a stepping point [to ending conversion therapy], which is a bit of a cumbersome process, but in order that within such regulation therapists cannot do this kind of work," he said.

Currently, there is no state regulation for psychotherapists or counsellors, only a voluntary central register. Neither "psychotherapist" nor "counsellor" are what is known as a "protected title". This means that unlike doctors, nurses, or psychiatrists, anyone call themselves a counsellor or psychotherapist without needing any training, experience, or qualifications. Instead, there are private, independent professional organisations of which some counsellors and therapists are members. But membership is not compulsory and none are answerable to any government body. This means that if one of these bodies wanted to allow conversion therapy it could, and if an organisation withdrew a therapist's membership, they could simply carry on practicing elsewhere. In a strange anomaly, however, certain specialist therapists are regulated, such as art therapists and music therapists – coming under the control of the Health and Care Professionals Council – but psychotherapists are not. "People have been trying to introduce regulation for several years," said Freer. "I’m not the first, and in terms of the issues facing the LGBT community there have been other, bigger battles, but this is still a problem. Regulation will put all forms of counselling on an equal footing, with protection for the professionals as well as the [service] users." Freer said an open letter signed by over 80 therapists sent this week to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), Britain's largest private body for therapists, urging the organisation to recognise that conversion therapy is administered to trans people, spurred him on to try to introduce state regulation.

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