Can gay people be cured

Conversion therapy has proven ineffective at best and harmful at worst, yet for those whose religious beliefs forbid homosexuality or who believe that being LGBTQ makes life too difficult, what. Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist in Encino, Calif., says he can rid adults, teens, and even children of homosexuality.

For nearly 30 years, he has offered a "psychodynamic" form of reparative therapy for people — mostly men — seeking to change their sexual orientation. Even when psychiatrists do try to aid homosexuals, their efforts are likely to be ineffectual because they themselves have so little confidence of success. Both patients and doctors are wrong.

As LGBTQ+ people across the country were losing jobs, kids, medical services and basic dignity, these activists wanted the diagnosis removed—to move psychiatry into the 20th century. Their. The United Kingdom has changed for the better, and now some degree of legal protection is afforded to gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. However, I wonder whether people who cross dress (transvestites) are the new outcasts, with a range of treatments applied designed to “cure” them of something that society disapproves of.

Christian Pastor Peresvetov claims religion can cure gay "perversion". Controversial "treatments" by psychotherapists and preachers are being offered to gay people in Russia. BBC Russian heard accounts of so-called cures, after it emerged that gay men were being persecuted in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim republic in southern Russia. On Tuesday German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had asked Vladimir Putin to "use his influence to protect the rights of minorities", referring to the reports from Chechnya.

Homosexuality is not officially considered a mental disorder in Russia. But homophobia is common - not only in Chechnya. Russia removed homosexuality from its list of recognised psychiatric conditions in - after the US had done so in and the World Health Organization in Globally, scientists do not recognise any "treatment" of homosexuality as effective or required.

Psychotherapist Yan Goland, from the city of Nizhny Novgorod, says he has "cured" 78 gay and eight transsexual people using a method developed in the Soviet Union by his teacher, Nikolai Ivanov. He told the BBC that the "treatment" lasted between eight and 18 months, and longer for transsexuals. The patient is filled with hope that we can help, and understands they need to be treated," he said.

In the first stage, he aims to "extinguish" the individual's same-sex attraction. The hypnotherapy sessions can last up to eight hours.

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He also uses a mixture of psychoanalysis and identity therapy as a way of influencing a person's dreams. The second stage is meant to forge an attraction to the opposite sex. He prompts his male patients to sexually objectify the women around them. Step three, Mr Goland says, involves sex with members of the opposite sex. Yuri, 40, says he underwent the psychotherapist's "treatment" in the early s, wanting to "wake up and be on the right path", but ended up with his sex drive in tatters.

It was catastrophic, if I'm honest. Mr Goland is now 80 and says he is still "treating" people. Chechen police 'torturing gay men'. Russia's mixed messages on LGBT. Anti-gay drive evicts Russian teacher. There are claims that hypnosis can help some people struggling with their sexuality. A Russian web search on "how to cure homosexuality" brings up various websites offering online consultations with doctors.

The Nikitenko brothers describe themselves as "psycho-hypnologists" and offer a two-month course of audio-hypnosis. Nikolai Nikitenko believes homosexuality is a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD. A guy from Vladivostok called me: he's 18 and said he was worrying for nine hours a day about becoming gay. Their hypnotherapy aims to de-stress the patient and teach them the "right ways to behave and react".

The brothers boast they have already "treated" seven gay people who wanted to be straight and say there is "no chance of them relapsing". But there are doctors in Russia with views closer to those of Western specialists and scientists worldwide. Attempts to change your sexual orientation through psychotherapy can be damaging, he warned. The Russian Orthodox Church sees homosexuality as sinful.