IslamOnline.net and News Agencies
LONDON - A sixth of British therapists said they had tried to help gay, bisexual and lesbian patients become heterosexual, according to a survey released on Thursday.
Michael King of University College London, who published his findings in the journal BMC Pyschiatry, said the number of therapists who said they still try to help a person change their sexual orientation surprised him.
Treating homosexuality as a mental illness was more common in the United States and Britain during the 1970s and 1980s, when so-called "aversion" therapy was in vogue, he added.
These treatments involved tactics such as pairing homosexual imagery with electric shocks to induce feelings of revulsion. The problem with such approaches, however, was that they could provoke greater anxiety and confusion and so could actually be harmful, said King.
"There was a huge fashion for these treatments in the 1970s and 80s," King told Reuters. "Now we are talking more about helping patients control their thoughts to reduce their homosexual feelings."
King's study showed that some therapists now use more subtle strategies aimed at getting patients to "control" their homosexual feelings, and eventually change their sexual orientation.
King and colleagues asked more than 1,400 therapists if they would try to change a patient's sexual orientation if asked to do so.
Only 4 percent declared that they would. However, in response to further questions, almost 17 percent said that they had already tried to help patients control or change their sexual orientation through a range of therapies.
Reasons provided by therapists in the anonymous study ranged from their own religious and moral views about homosexuality to patients' anxiety over discrimination, the researchers said.
According to King, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1992.
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