Reparative Therapy

Reparative Therapy

"Reparative therapy" refers to psychotherapy to eliminate individuals' sexual desires for members of their own gender. Sexual orientation is one component of a person's identity, which is made up of many other components, such as culture, ethnicity, gender, and personality traits. Sexual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction that a person feels towards another person.

Highlights

Sexual orientation falls along a continum. In other words, someone does not have to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, but can feel varying degrees of attraction for both genders. Sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime—different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents follow a developmental path that is both similar to and quite different from that followed by heterosexual adolescents. All teenagers face certain developmental challenges, such as developing social skills, thinking about career choices, and fitting into a peer group. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth must also cope with prejudiced, discriminatory, and violent behavior and messages in their families, schools, and communities. Such behavior and messages negatively affect the health, mental health and education of lesbian, gay, and bisexual young people.

These students are more likely than heterosexual students to report missing school due to fear, being threatened by other students, and having their property damaged at school. The promotion of "reparative therapy" is likely to exacerbate the risk of harassment, harm, and fear.

For these reasons, the experience of gay, lesbian, and bisexual teenagers is often one of isolation, fear of stigmatization, and lack of peer or familial support. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth have few opportunities for observing positive modeling by adults due to the general cultural bias that makes gay, lesbian, and bisexual people largely invisible. It is this isolation and lack of Sexual Orientation Development.

Sexual orientation is one component of a person's identity. Sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime. The experience of gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers is often one of isolation, fear of stigmatization and lack of peer or familial support.

A support that accounts in part for the higher rates of emotional distress, suicide attempts, and risky sexual behavior and substance use that gay, lesbian, and bisexual students report compared to heterosexual students. Because of their legitimate fear of being harassed or hurt, gay, lesbian, or bisexual youth are less likely to ask for help. Thus, it is important that their environments be as open and accepting as possible, so these young people will feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and concerns.

"Coming out" refers to the process of acknowledging one's gay, lesbian, or bisexual attractions and identity to oneself and disclosing them to others. This process is different for every teenager; however, most adolescents disclose their sexual orientation to others in the following order: other gay, lesbian, and bisexual peers, close heterosexual peers, close family members, and finally, parents.

The term "reparative therapy" refers to psychotherapy aimed at eliminating homosexual desires and is used by people who do not think homo-sexuality is one variation within human sexual orientation, but rather still believe homosexuality is a mental disorder. The most important fact about "reparative therapy," also sometimes known as "conversion" therapy, is that it is based on an understanding of homosexuality that has been rejected by all the major health and mental health professions.

Thus, the idea that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that the emergence of same-gender sexual desires among some adolescents is in any way abnormal or mentally unhealthy has no support among health and mental health professional organizations. Despite the unanimity of the health and mental health professions on the normality of homosexuality, the idea of "reparative therapy" has recently been adopted by conservative organizations and aggressively promoted in the media. And a number of the health and mental health professional organizations have recently issued public statements about "reparative therapy" as well.

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