Tag Archives: Conversion Therapy

Guest Blog: Dr Igi Moon

Posted on by

We’re reproducing the speech Igi Moon made at the Parliamentary Launch for the new and revised Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy.  This document extends the protections afforded to lesbians, gay men and bisexual people from receiving harmful attempts to be heterosexual.  This new document protects people who are gender diverse and those who are asexual from treatments from therapists.

UKParliament.jpg

Parliamentary MoU2 launch event – 4th July 2018

“I am here as Chair of the MoU Coalition against conversion therapy. The coalition is made up of 16 organisations as well as advisory bodies offering clinical and therapeutic services to LGBTQIA people. Together we represent over 100, 000 psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors and healthcare workers.

The main purpose of today’s launch is for MP’s to meet with clinicians and campaigners ahead of the Government’s pledge to ‘end the practice of Conversion Therapy’. While the media yesterday reported an outright ban, we believe a ban will simply play into the hands of organisations that want publicity.

Yesterday – was the launch of the LGBT National survey. 108,100 people responded to the survey. It is the largest of its kind in the world. That is something all LGBT people can be proud of. But while we celebrate this survey we need to take a close look at the finer details of what it is saying about LGBT lives in our society. Because some findings make very uncomfortable reading. They tell a story that is all too familiar to LGBT people who still experience significant inequalities and fear for their personal safety – inequalities and fears that may well take them to see therapists. This is why we want all clinicians in training and practice to be made aware of the range of issues presented in the survey. And for all clinicians to be able to work competently with LGBT people

It is central that LGBT people can explore their feelings and thoughts in safety whether or not it is about their sexuality and/or gender identity with a qualified psychologist, psychotherapist, counsellor, or healthcare worker.

Shockingly, this is simply not the case. In our society, some people believe (for whatever reason) that LGBT people can be ‘cured’ of their sexuality or gender identity if they are LGBT.  Through the use of Conversion Therapy (CT), also known as Reparative or Cure Therapy). More shockingly, they believe that the techniques of CT will suppress or change an LGBT person. These techniques include anything from pseudo-psychological treatments to spiritual counselling. At their most extreme, people in the survey reported undergoing surgical or hormonal interventions or even ‘corrective rape’. It is abhorrent as a practice.

Yesterday, the survey found that a total 7% of respondents had undergone or been offered Conversion Therapy and of this, 2% had undergone and 5% had been offered CT.

It is a very live issue – with young people16-24 more likely to have been offered CT than any other group.

The MoU Coalition published this MoU before the Survey results were announced because we were faced with mounting anecdotal evidence  that we needed to protect  sexual orientation including asexuality AND the variety of gender identities

Thanks to the survey we sadly find that anecdotal evidence was correct.

The survey found

  1. In terms of sexual orientation, Asexual people are the most likely group to undergo and be offered conversion therapy
  2. In relation to Gender Identity – Trans respondents were much more likely to have undergone or been offered conversion therapy more than cis people.
  3. That more trans men have been offered CT than non-binary people or trans women
  4. That more trans women have had conversion therapy than trans men or non-binary people
  5. That those most likely to have been offered CT or undergone CT live in Northern Ireland and London

So, who conducts CT to cis and Trans people?

  1. By far the greatest are faith organisations
  2. Healthcare or a medical professional is second – (with far more trans people being offered CT than cis people)
  3. Parent or guardian or family member
  4. Person from my community
  5. Other individuals or organisations

The fact healthcare and medical professionals conduct CT is a major shock and the MOU is asking that ethical practice is at the core of therapeutic work. This means practitioners must have adequate knowledge and understanding of gender and sexual diversity throughout their training before they can be accredited, registered or chartered. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY IT MEANS ASKING LGBT PEOPLE WHAT THEY NEED – ESPECIALLY TRANS AND NON BINARY PEOPLE.

Both the BPS and BACP have published guidelines for working with gender and sexual minorities. This is a good start but not enough.

Our Training and Curriculum Development sub-Committee find that while organisations say they want to USE THE GUIDELINES AND TRAIN PEOPLE EFFECTIVELY – IN over 7 years of training, it has been found that anything between zero and 16 hours max are spent in total teaching ‘difference’. This needs to change.

Yesterday, the overwhelming statement was

   “This practice (of CT) needs to end”

The Government Equalities Office action plan is to bring an end to the practice of CT.

We want to work with the government on legislative and non-legislative options.

At present we say no to an outright ban because CT is conducted by people who are obviously not therapists in some cases and would not call what they do anything more than a cure for a sickness. It needs more than a ban – it requires education at a young age that allows young people to be who they are without fear.

Likewise, it is still possible in this country to call yourself a counsellor or psychotherapist as these are not protected titles.  We believe that the Government must address this issue.

Where is the MOU next?

2 areas the MOU Coalition are likely to address:

Support for the GRA review because it is a once in a lifetime opportunity for trans people to experience wide ranging social change. We must recognise the variety of gender identities as valid. As the Minister for Women and Equalities the Rt Honourable Penny Mordaunt Minister stated yesterday to a ringing round of applause:  “a trans woman is a woman and a transman is a man” and we would add that those who wish to identify in the wide range of gender identities have that option. This is because the survey clearly identified that non-binary identities are on the rise and more respondents identified as non-binary

Second, we hope the General Synod will use the survey and our MoU as an opportunity to extend protection to Trans and non-binary people

Third we all – all of us have a debt to our future young people. We must remember that a central finding yesterday was 2000 people identified starting their transition AT SCHOOL. The survey only started from age 16

The MOU Coalition have brought on board those organisations such as Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids that work with young people under 16 to offer their thoughts about protecting these vulnerable children and teenagers. We are already hearing young people are the victims of Conversion therapy – sometimes in medical settings where we would expect safety. This must be investigated as a matter of urgency. We urge the Government to find out what is happening with young people who identify as LGBT and non-binary.

On a final note,

Over 2/3 of respondents stated they would not hold hands with their partner in public. It is pride on Saturday.  I want to hold hands with the person I love. On Saturday, I want us all to be able to hold hands with those we love in public and in safety because

TO LIVE IN SAFETY IS OUR FREEDOM

AND TO HAVE OUR FREEDOM IS THE GREATEST FORM OF EQUALITY WE CAN SHARE

Thanks to Ben Bradshaw MP for hosting this event, to our speakers. I would like to thank all members of the Coalition and especially Rosie Horne from the BPS for working so hard to bring this event together.

Today is IDAHOBIT

Posted on by

May 17th is International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (or IDAHOBIT) where 130 countries around the world mark lesbophobia (where the term leads the South American efforts), homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.  It started out as IDAHO, then in 2009 added the T and in 2015 we Brits added bisexuality, so you’ll see it spelt differently depending on where you are in the world.  The similarity in name and reference to hobbits wasn’t welcomed by many activists around the world who saw:

*Consultations on the name with activists in 120 countries have concluded that the reference to hobbits might be clever for some parts of the world, but were seen elsewhere as an imposition of Western values. In many places where people are facing daily life threats, this proposal was considered highly inappropriate.

The theme this year is Mental Health and Well-being.

13221194_1100283186677128_1382258632041923606_o

Dr Felicity Daly, Adernoke Apata, Prof. Michael King & Dominic Davies at Kaleidoscope Lecture

On Tuesday last week, I was invited by Dr Felicity Daly, Executive Director of the Kaleidoscope Trust to take part in a lecture on Global Mental Health and Well-being.  Other panelists were Nigerian LGBT Activist and Asylum Seeker Aderonke Apata and Professor Michael King of University College Hospital. This blog is an extended version of my brief presentation there.
At Pink Therapy we been engaging in a small way on the international stage for a little under a decade. I would occasionally get emails from therapists around the world asking for support and training and our weekend based model of short courses wasn’t conducive to their being able to travel on a regular basis and study with us.   Seven  years ago Pink Therapy ran a not for profit International Summer School.  Over the subsequent years we have had psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists  and sexologists from across Europe (including Central & Eastern Europe (Latvia, Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Hungary).  Plus Israel Malta, Spain, Italy, France Germany, Denmark, Finland, Eire, Portugal, Scotland, NZ. South America: Brazil & Colombia. We’ve even had  one person from Africa (Benin).

There are also a number of overseas countries where I’ve delivered training: (in alphabetical order): Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia,Dublin, France, Germany, Guernsey, Latvia, Malta and New Zealand, each has their own rich and quite different environment for the way Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diverse people are living their lives.

IMG_3294

Summer School Graduates 2015

Most of the therapists attending our Summer School’s have been working in very isolated contexts, where they might have been virtually the only out gay therapist in their country.  They’ve worked with an incredibly wide range of clients.  Some worked with LGBT victims of war, and of poverty, (the Transgender Roma’s of Serbia), or where the political situation is becoming more conservative and repressive (Poland).

Many of the psychologists/therapists are activist-clinicians.  I met a an amazing intersex activist and therapist Mani Bruce Mitchell when I visited New Zealand or a lecture tour to promote the first volume of Pink Therapy in 1996.  Mani was then the only out Intersex person in NZ.  They recently had a second documentary made about them Intersexion which did very well at the LGBT+ Film Festivals around the world.

One of the earliest people to connect with us was Miguel Rueda-Saenz who went on to set up Pink Consultores an organisation similar to Pink Therapy in Bogota, Colombia and his University invited me to come out and deliver some training in Colombia. We’ve also had Klecius Borges a Brazilian Jungian psychotherapist who has done amazing work raising awareness of LGB mental issues and become a bit of a Brazilian television celebrity. We have had in two different cohorts,  two lesbian therapists from Singapore where homosexuality is still illegal.   It’s still not uncommon to find clinicians in Asia claiming homosexuality is a mental illness.  I heard about this from people in Malaysia and China recently.

nopride

No Pride sticker from Latvia

I was invited to help train the very first LGBT helpline volunteers in Latvia. (The year before the ‘Friendship Parade’ was 300 people marching around a city park heavily protected by armed police and 3000 protestors outside screaming abuse at them.  They were bussed away from the park for their own safety.

Normally the people running such a service would be entirely self-identified as LGBT or T). On my helpline training in Latvia where there were just three brave out lesbian and gay therapists and so heterosexual allies formed the majority of the group.  One of the out gay therapists was Maris Sants  a priest and psychotherapist living in Latvia and one of the most well qualified therapists I’ve met.  He is a survivor of Russian Reparative Therapy and was often brought into the TV studio to comment on LGBT human rights issues.  Subsequently he was frequently spat at and attacked in the street for being openly gay. He is now exiled in the UK, where he initially got a job working in a café as a barista whilst he continued to serve the therapy needs of his fellow gay Latvians via the safety of Skype consultations.

There are so many stories of resistance and resilience we’ve heard over the years.

Our new 2 year Post Graduate Diploma is making a contribution to this deficit. Even in the UK, therapists have virtually virtually NO training in working with LGBT clients, despite LGBT people having much poorer mental health than the heterosexual and cis-gender population.  Across the world, it’s much, much worse.

We know LGBT’s have poorer mental health.  Especially the B’s and the T’s by virtue of the pressures on us due to Minority Stress and even amongst those of us with all kinds of privilege by virtue of gender, race, education, and class, we continue to face the constant toxic low-grade micro aggressions – the kind of marinade of ‘tolerance’ and mild disgust we live with – especially when we make ourselves visible, through the privilege of being able to engage in public displays of affection or state sanctioned weddings.  How much worse must it be when you face prison or punishment rapes or an honour killing for being LGBT?

Mental Health is such an important human right to be fighting for.  It goes to the heart of a country’s well-being – in terms of it’s health care, its culture, it’s spiritual life, and of course  the economy.  So finding a way to improve the legal situation in countries where homosexuality and gender variance are punished is crucial. Kaleidoscope have a project to change the laws in Commonwealth Countries. But so is improving the awareness of our fellow citizens at home.  Things are changing.  Much more than I could have imagined when I was coming out 35 years ago.  But there is still a long way to go.  This is why IDAHOBIT/IDAHOT is so important.

Dominic Davies
CEO – Pink Therapy

We’re all in it together. Aren’t we?

Posted on by

IMG_6098On Friday, I received this invitation. 

I was both thrilled by the recognition that my contribution to British society had been recognised and then immediately felt deeply uncomfortable. 

I wasn’t sure what to do. I just don’t feel comfortable being part of ‘Dirty Dave’s’ PR effort to impress the queers that the Tories care about us. They don’t care about us, and they care about the weak and the vulnerable even less. 

I talked to a few trusted friends and colleagues and came to the conclusion that in all conscience I just didn’t feel it was right to go.  It’s been a complex process and not one that everyone will agree with, but I wanted to explain my reasons for this.

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of representing the working group of the Memorandum of Understanding around Conversion Therapy in a small meeting with Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health, Jane Ellison MP, in her very smart and newly refurnished office at the Department of Health. I was delighted with how much she seemed to grasp about the complexities of therapists and staff in the NHS who might be approached by people wanting to change their sexuality or their gender.  She seemed compassionate, bright and well intentioned.

It was then somewhat of a surprise, when I saw that she recently voted to support benefit cuts, and  just recently voted against allowing 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children into the UK. In fact, she rarely votes against the Government, but then again, I guess that’s how you get to be Deputy Health Minister.  I am politically quite naive aren’t I?

The Conservative Government under David Cameron has done far worse damage to the Welfare State and to the NHS than Margaret Thatcher did.

Of course, I am delighted that Britain now has some of the best LGBT human rights protections in the world, although let’s not forget they want to opt our of the European Convention on Human Rights.  It seems that so long as we play nice, and want to get married and settle down like ‘normal’ people. But making PrEP available for those filthy gay men who have condomless sex outside of monogamous relationships?  Don’t bank on getting that funded.

If you can afford £50 (or less) a month, you might want to protect yourself and order online!  We have Trident to fund after all!  It’s interesting isn’t it, we can always find money for bombs, even if we can’t afford to look after the more vulnerable members of society like the refugee children who have been made homeless and lost their parents because of our bombs!

I’m interested to see what action get’s taken on the Transgender Equality Enquiry.  I suspect it will get buried. 

Everyone is aware of the cuts in funding of the third sector organisations – LGBT organisations are like PACE closed down and others are having “to do much more for less” and the savage cuts to the benefits system have caused thousands of people to become homeless and die.  Including LGBT teens of course.

I attended Digital Pride on Saturday, and heard from the black panelists on the Race panel (before I chaired the one on Mental Health), how appalling the Home Office are still being in assessing asylum claims for those LGBT Asylum seekers fleeing persecution in oppressive regimes abroad. It’s certainly not getting better for them.

As a result, I’m not sure that I can in all conscience attend this garden party for 200 hand picked LGBT people of influence and pretend to support David Cameron’s government when so many other groups in our society are suffering at his hands.  Wandering around his carefully tended garden with the waft of Terre by Hermés with the A-Gays drinking nice wine and showing gratitude for how far we’ve come, when we have homeless queer youth on the streets, LGBT Asylum seekers being starved and sent home to their deaths, and the Junior Doctors being asked to put patient’s lives at risk because Jeremy Hunt on a whim feels that they can all work a little harder.

Some people have told me that it’s better to be on the inside changing things.  I’m missing out on the opportunity to make connections with powerful people of influence and inform them more about Queer mental health.  But another, less principled aspect of this is that in all honesty, as someone who is socially fairly introverted and finds large gatherings like this a nightmare, I really doubt I would have been able to operate in that sphere and I’d just lurk on the edge, taking selfies for my Facebook page.

There are many people who are great at ‘working’ these events, and having these difficult conversations, and who can stomach to do that in the face of knowing full-well what the wider picture is.  Those are the people who have fought for and won so many of our recent Rights and protections.  I admire them and I’m pleased they are doing what they do.  I just don’t have the stomach for it.

Dominic Davies
CEO – Pink Therapy

BACP Signs up!

Posted on by

I was delighted to learn that the BACP Board of Governors decided to sign up to an inclusive Memorandum of Understanding to extend protections to trans people and asexuals.  This still hasn’t been published on their website but will be soon.BACP MoU statementI am grateful that to everyone who played a part in lobbying the Board with their views, research and concerns.  I think this has been immensely helpful in helping the Board decide that these protections are needed.

All the signatories to the MoU need to follow their due process and consider the implications for signing up and extending the protections.  BACP were doing just that.  It had been reported elsewhere that they had refused to sign, and this was a distortion of what I had been stating, that the Board were to meet in Early March and the indication I’d had was that they might decide not to sign based on “a lack of evidence & research.”  This research was then supplied and the Board of Governors were able to make an informed decision.

I’ve been mulling over whether to still resign over my broader dissatisfactions with BACP. However, I think to resign at this point might look like this queen has had a hissy fit.   

BACP ought to be well aware of the significantly higher rates of mental health problems within the LGB and T community based on research they commissioned in 2007.  However, I am saddened that they’ve not used their considerable resources to ensure that counsellors are adequately trained to support LGBT people.  Their signing up to the Memorandum of Understanding makes this an obligation and I am hopeful they will be auditing their accredited courses more closely on their attention to issues to GSRD issues.

I had hoped that having been made a Fellow in 2007 for my “distinctive service to the field”  that this might signal an opportunity to collaborate in improving the mental health of Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversities (GSRD). BACP also published my article Not in Front of the Students about the absence of training in their journal in the same year.  But nothing has changed and I’ve felt quite dispirited. Instead, BACP have promoted workshops on treating sexual addiction which is a highly contested and controversial issue which many of us in the field of clinical sexology would dispute See Marty Klein who has blogged extensively on this or the excellent book by David Ley Ley, 2013, Flanagan 2013 and my post Davies, 2013) Sexual Addiction or Hypersexual Disorder failed to be included in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the bible for mental health disorders compiled by the American Psychiatric Association) on the grounds of lack of robust evidence for diagnosis and effective treatment.

One of the positives that has come from my having taken stance is that MANY therapists and members of the GSRD communities have been having a conversation about therapy and it’s need to catch up with the rapid evolving field and address the mental health needs of our communities.  [Over 80 concerned therapists and sexologists signed an open letter to the Board.]

It always surprises non-counsellors when I tell them that in what can be between a three to seven year training to become a therapist there is virtually no training in basic human sexuality and relationships let alone in working with people whose sexuality is different to the mainstream. Unless one trains to be a sex therapist, one is unlikely to be able to engage in explicitly sexual conversations.

Perhaps all of this activity over the past few weeks can pave the way for a closer dialogue between all of us who are concerned to see better mental health for our communities. We’ll see!

Dominic Davies
CEO/Founder Pink Therapy

BACP seen as flawed at home and abroad

Posted on by

globe.jpeg

There continues to be a lot of support for my stance and criticism not only of BACP but the training organisations that are accredited by them:

 

I’m in my second year of a Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling with an Integrative approach in London. Your post about leaving the BACP over their LGBTQ diversity issues worries me as a trainee. As I’m told at every stage I need to be BACP registered and Accredited. I’m so glad I received today the link from you and a hard copy of Therapy Today on this issue. It is so true that there is a lack of training regarding this. In our institution we have had a days session and if it wasn’t delivered from my colleague who is Trans and myself and aware of your work and other material on Gay Affirmation therapy and how Counsellors / Therapists should work with clients presenting these issues. I would hate to think what would have been delivered. We only presented to one class of three! It really seems a token gesture and not taken seriously for those in current training to challenge their own views and prejudices! 

Not sure why the lecturers didn’t deliver it? Perhaps they aren’t trained or up to date with this??? Needs to be rolled out to all institutions!

Another counsellor responded:

This is so familiar, so many people here delivered the only LGBT component of their course, as students, often having to balance outing themselves with tackling prejudice and outdated notions

Another said:

I qualified as an Integrative Counsellor in 2008. We had no training whatsoever concerning LGBTQI clients. I researched myself and went on a couple of courses with Pink Therapy. Sad to hear it seems much the same in 2016!

Some international support

I read of your resignation from the BACP today. I think you are doing the right thing, and someone of your stature doing this may possibly effect some shift, certainly makes people take notice. I am a fellow psychologist; I resigned from APA years ago due to the terrible issues around torture, failure to take treatment efficacy seriously, and also the foolhardy drive to attain prescription privileges. Better to stand apart, in my opinion, than to be associated with an unethical herd. The issues around conversion therapy are quite serious and real, and no responsible psychologist should ignore it.

and this one:

This morning I read about your resignation from the BACP, and I just want to say thank you so much.

I am lucky to be a young queer woman in Boston, where the atmosphere of most places is somewhere between tolerant and accepting. But in my experiences of mental healthcare, I’ve seen a completely different world. So many psychologists and counsellors are uneducated and untrained about LGBT+ matters, and I’ve seen so much damage done to my queer community because of it. 

I am graduating from high school in a few months, and as I head into college to major in mental health counseling and social work, I feel like it’s important to have faith in the mental healthcare world that I want to work in. It’s really hard to have that faith when I’ve already seen so many problems with the system, especially in the treatment of LGBT+ people. But actions like yours give me hope– I read your statement and remembered that systems can be changed, and the people who choose to work in the counseling world do that work because they genuinely want to help others. 

Thank you so, so much for reaffirming that for me, and thank you for the work you’re doing. I imagine it’s not easy to speak out against a group like the BACP. The LGBT+ world is lucky to have you.

On the monopoly BACP seem to have with employers:

FFS. That leaves me in a very bad situation. It’s not like I have much choice of professional organisations to belong to.

And another:

I’m not sure where else I can go in terms of membership organisations. Makes me feel angry at the conservatism of the BACP.

And another:

I’m a referral counsellor for a therapy centre based on my BACP accreditation, it would mean losing my livelihood unless I could persuade the therapy centre to accept the National Counselling Society.

What could BACP be doing?

Some people have asked me what specifically could BACP be doing to support the LGBT communities better. Here are a few suggestions to be going on with:

  1. Develop some core competencies on Equality and Diversity related issues that take account of the complexity of intersectionality.
  2. Ensure therapists receive some basic sexuality awareness training so that they can discuss sexual issues with their clients.
  3. Ensure Gender and Sexual Diversity issues are woven throughout the therapy training and not just a tokenistic add on.
  4. Closely audit the courses BACP accredit to ensure they are meeting these requirements.
  5. The training should be delivered either by faculty if they feel competent, or by external trainers. Students enrolled in the programme should not be delivering this training.
  6. As the major UK therapy organisation and therefore the wealthiest, BACP could be funding a researcher to produce an FAQ on Conversion Therapy  and develop some training materials on this subject as a resource for all of the signatory organisations and their members.
  7. Actively support people from disadvantaged and underserved communities to train as therapists.  In particular, increase the availability of  therapy from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and Trans and Gender Diverse counsellors.  Both groups are significantly economically disadvantaged in society and yet also have poorer mental health and so we need to ensure training isn’t only affordable by wealthy people. This is why we’re offering a couple of training bursaries for our own two-year PG Diploma in Gender and Sexual Diversity Therapy to Trans and BAME therapists.  It’s estimated that basic therapy training costs between £20-£80k and for those people who then want to go on and specialise in working with Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diverse Clients it’s going to add another £5k.

In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned how both BAATN and ourselves have set up volunteer led mentoring schemes to support those members of our communities who are training to be therapists in what can be quite alienating and hostile environments.

Dominic Davies
22 Feb 2016

Following up on BACP

Posted on by

PINK4646 DD Portrait

I wanted to say how incredibly moved I am by the level of support I’ve received since announcing my resignation from BACP yesterday.  I had no idea that my social media influence was quite so effective and I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive comments of gratitude for taking a principled stand and raising awareness of their failure to address the mental health needs of our community.

Concerned colleagues and BACP members have written an open letter to the Board of Governors.  If you wish to join the Pink Therapy closed Facebook group (aimed at therapists working with GSD clients) and follow the discussion click here.

I have also been deeply saddened by seeing the high level of disaffection with BACP – the largest counselling and psychotherapy body in the UK.

“..Removing yourself from such an organisation and doing so publicly gives a voice to all those lgbtq people who have suffered from BACP’s heel dragging and it also empowers the new Society by having you give authority and credence to its stand on issues of sexuality, orientation, and expression.”

I’ve sat by for almost 35  long years hoping BACP would do the right thing and address the issues of improving the quality of mental health provision for LGBT people. 

It’s not as if there are no gay people working in the highest echelons of BACP. But it’s largely cis white gay male privilege reinforcing the status quo from within. I recall in my early days of attending BACP annual conferences (when they had such things) that I’d be largely avoided by ‘discretely’ gay/bi senior officials – fear of guilt by association.  But it gave me some sense that BACP might be alright and looking out for us.

Sadly this is not the case.  They’ve done very little over these three decades to raise the standards of counsellor training to help therapists feel more comfortable discussing sex and relationship issues let alone anything less mainstream like Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversities (GSRD).  I’ve written about this before: Not in Front of the Students in 2007.  Nothing’s changed as Meg-John Barker and I reported last year in an article on the UKCP Journal The Psychotherapist 

Meanwhile I’ve ploughed my own furrow and made way for a new generation of GSRD therapists and had the privilege of training and working alongside many of them. Developing courses to fill the gap left by the heteronormative mainstream has failed to address.

As Audre Lorde said:
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

It’s fascinating that BACP has never sought to create a division around gender and sexual diversity issues.  The old PSRF (Personal, Sexual, Relationship and Family) division got rebranded ‘Private Practice’ and there was, for a few years a RACE division but that limped along poorly supported and so as Lorde predicted, the queers and those of colour created their own spaces for support, training and development.  The Black and Asian Therapists Network (BAATN) is a thriving active body which meets regularly in London (co-incidentally in the same building as we run our training workshops).

Over the years, largely because of the lack of attention to diversity, I have programmed many large conferences addressing gender, sexuality and relationship diversity issues.  Personally taking the risk of financial loss if they’re not well enough attended (and one of these cost me £3k of my savings).  I am enormously committed to improving the quality of therapy available and the training of therapists has been a major focus of my career. Pink Therapy receives no grants or external funding.  It’s entirely funded from training course fees and directory membership fees. We’ve also followed BAATN’s lead and developed a mentoring scheme because of the endemic homophobia, biphobia and transphobia many counsellors feel in their training courses. 

So it feels a kick in the teeth when I hear from people whom I’ve always respected that they feel there is a lack of evidence that Conversion Therapy is being practiced on trans and gender variant people and on asexuals.  They may not know of it happening, they may not have seen the research, but that DOES NOT mean there is no evidence!  (yesterday I cited several studies).  Those of us closely connected to the Trans and Asexual communities are hearing all the time about how crappy therapists have been, how inappropriately they’ve treated them. It’s unfortunate that BACP are so out of touch and uninterested in learning from our communities.

Conversion therapy in the UK is also on a pretty small scale and I’m not sure there has been much ‘evidence base’ for that apart from Bartlett et al who found appalling levels of ignorance amongst mainstream counsellors responding to requests for reduction in their same-sex attractions.  But these therapists wouldn’t have said they were doing “conversion therapy” which is a term largely used by fundamentalist Christians or the Orthodox Jewish organisation Jonah.  Conversion therapy IS big business in the USA but here in the UK it’s more that well meaning, under-trained therapists agree to try to help a distressed client manage their same sex attractions by encouraging them towards heterosexuality.  This is highly analogous to CAMS and other therapists working with children and families who present with gender non-conforming behaviour brought by their concerned parents worried that their child might be gay or trans and being advised to discourage cross gender play. 

I am looking forward to taking up membership of what seems a much more supportive and progressive, albeit smaller counselling body – the National Counselling Society who have a policy of accepting members who are already accredited elsewhere in at the same level as they were.  So in addition to my existing membership and Senior Accreditation with the National Council of Psychotherapists (who few people seem to know about), I will become enjoy Senior Accreditation and continue to be on the PSA Register.  It was tempting to consider joining one of the more renegade groups of therapists like the Independent Practitioners Network, whom I have enormous respect for, but actually I want to be able to try to influence the profession by being a member of a larger body where we can hopefully raise awareness of equality and difference.

I was very troubled to hear though, how BACP seem to be holding a monopoly on who employers recognise as being THE accrediting/registering body for the profession.  One person commented on my post that he didn’t feel he could leave BACP as the NHS (in Wales) wouldn’t recognise membership of any other professional counselling/therapy body.  


Another respondent said: I’m a referral counsellor for a therapy centre based on my BACP accreditation, it would mean losing my livelihood unless I could persuade the therapy centre to accept the National Counselling organisation that Dominic mentioned…certainly needs to be thought through before I make any moves as I’m not in a financial position just to leave here not to mention all of the clients I currently see here, many of whom are trans or LGB…

Finally one last significant peeve I have with BACP is how they have been actively promoting the concept of “Sexual Addiction” by holding training events around this subject.  Sexual Addiction is a highly contentious and controversial subject – where there is no treatment evidence base or even any widely accepted diagnostic criteria and was declined inclusion in the DSM V on this basis.  Yet BACP seems to be happy to encourage their members to treat something which most informed clinical sexologists are highly sceptical of.  If you wish to read more about The Myth of Sexual Addiction see David Ley’s helpful book. 

Dominic Davies
18 Feb 2016

Why I am resigning from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

Posted on by

BACP_Member

I feel incredibly let down by my professional body – an organisation I have been a member of for almost 35 years and where I am a Senior Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist and a Fellow.  They have indicated that they are likely NOT to be signing up for a revised Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy which would be extended to include trans and asexuality.

I am so frustrated by their constant inaction and lack of understanding the issues that I am resigning.  Here are some of the reasons why:
As LGB and T people are over represented in the therapy-consuming population, due to demonstrably higher levels of mental distress and self harm there is an obvious and urgent need for counsellors to be able to provide skilled therapeutic support. 

This is a rapidly changing field in terms of our knowledge about gender and sexual minority groups, language and concepts are continuously shifting especially with regard to trans issues.

There has been fairly recent legislation affecting LGB and T people’s rights, which therapists are likely to be unaware of.  BACP has an obligation to ensure that therapists are to be kept up to date on all this.

Consistently research has demonstrated that LGB and T people have felt poorly served by therapists.  As BACP is the largest counselling professional body it’s likely to be the case that there will be a great many members who have not responded appropriately. 

In case you’re interested: Cordelia Galgut researched lesbians experiences of therapy, Iggi Moon conducted research into therapists attitudes to bisexuality, Tina Livingstone did a similar study but exploring therapists attitudes to trans people.  Karen Pollock researched how comfortable suicidal trans people felt about seeking counselling. Bartlett et al did a large study on the response of mental health professionals to clients seeking help to change sexual orientation ALL found appalling attitudes by counselling professionals to gender, sexual and relationship diverse groups.

The MoU v1 items 18 and 19 make it an obligation that members of the signatory bodies i.e. BACP counsellors should be adequately trained to know how to best respond when someone presents with confusion over their sexual orientation or is seeking a reduction in their same sex attraction or a ‘cure’.

“18 Those with a responsibility for training will work to ensure that trainings prepare therapists to sufficient levels of cultural competence so they can work effectively with LGB clients;

19 Training organisations will refer to the British Psychological Society guidelines on working with gender and sexual minority clients when reviewing their curriculum on equality and diversity issues;”

BACP took two years to resolve a case where someone (an undercover journalist investigating gay cure therapy in Britain) sought the help of a BACP Senior Accredited therapist (Lesley Pilkington) and was offered ‘gay cure’ therapy.  One of the major obstructions in the complaints process was to be able to find an unbiased/neutral complaints panel. I think BACP were also very scared that Pilkington was being defended by the Christian Legal Centre. BACP subsequently wrote to all members making it clear members were not to engage in reparative therapy, but have done very little to improve the confidence of therapists to know how best to respond to such requests from clients since then.

“14: For organisations with practitioner members, each will review their statements of ethical practice, and consider the need for the publication of a specific ethical statement concerning conversion therapy”

Today, I was informed in a “courtesy call, as a Fellow of BACP and someone very involved in these issues” that BACP don’t want to create an ever growing “list of orientations and conditions” [my emphasis], when the Ethical Framework already has principles which make unprofessional and incompetent practice unethical. 

They want to just rely upon their Ethical Framework (and there is a new one out in July) which is based on ethical principles, currently they are: autonomy, trustworthiness, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and self respect.  http://www.bacp.co.uk/ethical_framework/ethics.php to ensure members act appropriately and ethically.

However, how are therapists supposed to be able to deliver competent and ethical therapy without specific training about gender, sexual and relationship diverse clients?  For example, without knowledge of the specific mental health needs and socio-cultural contexts in which minority stress and micro aggressions contribute to much higher rates of depression, suicide and self harm, (with bisexuals and gender variant people having significantly poorer mental health than lesbians and gay men).  Research into self harm amongst trans people shows that over 40% of trans people have attempted to take their lives or self harmed, about how relationship dynamics are often different amongst LGB people; about working with gender variant young people.  There has been a 400% increase in referrals to the child and adolescent Gender Identity Development Unit at the Tavi and many therapists in community settings are working with young people and their families around gender identity issues.  We are increasingly hearing stories from trans people about poor understanding of their issues.  Including accounts from gender non-conforming young people being encouraged to follow to gender roles appropriate to the sex they were assigned at birth (i.e. boy’s shouldn’t play with dolls or dress in female clothing etc).

I think BACP are failing to support their members in learning how best to respond to gender, sexual and relationship diverse clients.  The occasional article in the Therapy Today does not count as adequate attention to the training and development needs of it’s members.

It’s my view that BACP has become a large bureaucracy which has failed to use it’s power and resources to address the failures of the counselling profession to improve the quality of therapy for gender, sexuality and relationship diverse clients. 

The decision as to whether to re-sign for an revised MoU inclusive of Trans and Asexuality has been referred to the Board of Governors who meet in March.  It’s been indicated to me that it’s likely they will feel signing up will not be consistent with BACP’s policy and practice.  I seriously doubt the Governors of BACP will be a particularly well informed group of individuals who will have their finger on the pulse regarding trans and asexuality issues so this a great way for the Executive of BACP to pass the buck. I’d be curious to see any briefing papers they have prepared for the Board on the issues involved in whether to sign back up to MoU v2.

I was proud to be made a Fellow of BACP back in 2007 for my “distinguished service to the field” but that award has been pretty hollow given how BACP have rarely sought advice and guidance on what they might need to be doing to meet the needs of their membership with regard to helping counsellors improve the mental health of our communities. 

My BACP membership is due for renewal next month, but I will not be renewing and I will instead be taking up membership of a smaller but much more responsive professional body – the National Counselling Society who have indicated that they have voted for an inclusive MoU v.2 and that my status of a Senior Accredited member can be transferred to their organisation and that their Professional Standards Committee would welcome my application for a Fellowship.  They are also keen to have have my expertise contribute to the way the organisation might support their members.

Perhaps other disaffected members of BACP might want to consider whether they want to continue their membership!


Dominic Davies

17 Feb 2016

Reparative therapy in Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Posted on by

The new (6th) edition of Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry features a chapter on a gender nonconforming young people for the first time, entitled “Gender dysphoria and paraphilic sexual disorders”. This chapter draws upon flawed and outdated research to effectively promote ‘reparative’ therapy, with the intention of changing children’s gender identities. It can be read here.

Authors Kenneth Zucker and Michael Seto suggest that therapists work with parents to “set limits with regard to cross-gender behaviour, and encourage same-sex peer relations and gender-typical activities”. In doing so, they promote the idea that issues faced by gender nonconforming children are due to an innate problem with the child, rather than with the child’s relation to normative societal gender roles.

Reparative therapy for gender identity issues can harm children by leading them to internalise the idea that nonconforming gendered expression is shameful or wrong (Ansara & Hegarty, 2012). It runs counter to explicit guidance on the treatment of children and young people from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care (WPATH, 2012). In contrast, approaches that enable and support children in exploring gender identity and expression have been shown to have beneficial outcomes (De Vries et al, 2013; Ehrensaft, 2012).

The chapter also exhibits poor scholarship. The first author prominently cites his own work no less than 17 times. Strong inferences are drawn from statistically insignificant quantitative findings. Blanchard’s (2010) deeply reductive typology of male-to-female transsexualism is reported on prominently, but the controversy of this theory (Serano, 2010) is not acknowledged.

Zucker’s own Gender Identity Service at the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health was recently recently suspended pending investigation following complaints from a number of parents. It is unclear whether or not the service will re-open, particularly as Zucker’s approach to therapy is now arguable illegal in the state of Ontario following a recent change in the law. Zucker has also been criticised for building his academic profile through an ‘invisible college’ of mutual citation and peer review (Ansara & Hegarty, 2012).

In light of these issues, it is deeply concerning that Zucker was invited to co-author this chapter.

For these reasons it might be best if the 6th edition of Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is not bought for libraries or used within training.

Guest Contributor:
Ruth Pearce
August 2015

Works referenced

Ansara, G and Hegarty, P (2012) Cisgenderism in psychology: pathologising and misgendering children from 1999 to 2008. Psychology & Sexuality 3:2, 137- 160

Blanchard, R (2010) The DSM diagnostic criteria for transvestic fetishism. Archives of Sexual Behavior 39, 363–372

Ehrensaft, D (2012) Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children. The Experiment Publishing: New York

Serano, J (2010) The Case Against Autogynephilia. International Journal of Transgenderism 12:3, 176-87

De Vries et al (2013) Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment. Pediatrics: 2013-2958

WPATH (2012) Standards of care for the health of transsexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming people. WPATH http://www.wpath.org/uploaded_files/140/files/Standards%20of%20Care,%20V7%20Full%20Book.pdf

 

Today I will attend the launch of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy.  This agreement is the first time all the major UK psy/therapy organisations have worked together on a collaborative project. It’s a huge achievement for the therapy world in its relationship to gender and sexual diversities.  Check out the list of signatories to the document at the end of this blog.

MoU_cover

The MoU will be launched at the Department of Health and arose from a meeting last April with health minister Norman Lamb MP who had convened a Round Table of all the psy/therapy professional bodies to discuss whether the government should ban conversion therapy outright.  He was very concerned that vulnerable people were being offered what is known to be a potentially very damaging ‘therapy’.  The Minister had previously asked UKCP to co-ordinate a Consensus Statement which also was launched at that event.

We all wanted to get beyond just fine words and look at how we can ensure therapists know what to do when someone presents for help over conflicts with their same sex attractions. All the professional therapy organisations already had individual statements condemning conversion therapy and attempts to ‘cure’ same sex attraction and their existing ethical codes are robust enough to deal with infringements by their members who might think this is acceptable. 

It was the felt by all attending that making conversion therapy illegal would be impossible to enforce and unhelpful to single out one rogue ‘therapy’ amongst all the other dubious therapies which exist for special treatment would be unhelpful.  Conversion therapy as an overt practice is almost exclusively delivered in the UK by a small group of religious fundamentalists (from both Evangelical Christian and Orthodox Jewish groups) who are likely to claim persecution for their religious beliefs. They are a powerful lobbying force but it’s clear to pretty much everyone Conversion Therapy goes against all the existing ethical frameworks for professional therapeutic work and our understanding of best practice.

However, my concern has always been that Conversion Therapy in the UK as practiced by a relatively small number of vociferous religiously motivated ‘therapists’ was more of a red herring.  What concerned me more was that research published in 2009 (Bartlett et al) revealed that an alarming 1 in 6 secular professional psy/therapists (members of BACP, UKCP, BPS and the RCPsych) had at some point either practiced to change a client’s same sex attractions or referred a client to a practitioner who would. Much of this harmful practice may be attributed to the historical and existing deficiencies in qualifying training to equip therapists to work in informed, competent and non-discriminatory ways with people from gender and sexual minorities.

So what centrally concerned us, was not to scare therapists off from responding to what are often very distressed clients presenting for help. Expectations, or explicit requests, that therapy will change sexual attraction or gender identity by clients struggling in managing their sexuality conflicts in what can often be experienced as life threatening situations (suicide and self harm rates are much higher amongst LGBT people). Intersectionality issues, such as religious, cultural, socio-economic and body type circumstances also may intensify a client’s anguish and isolation, also presenting further real threat of violence, enforced marriage, “corrective rape”, illegal incarceration and even execution.

If our attempts to inhibit incompetent or abusive therapy result in a therapist saying “I can’t talk to you about this” for fear of disciplinary action and complaint then we have reduced supportive safe spaces for that vulnerable person rather than protected and helped them. 

So in the relatively easy step of gaining publicly shared consensus against conversion therapy across the psy/therapy bodies, it is really important that we invest in the harder, less glamorous and more committed work of ensuring therapists are adequately trained and culturally safe and competent. This does not just include knowing that agreeing to requests to change a same sex attracted person into a happy heterosexually oriented one is much more likely to result in harm than success, but also safely holding and supporting the client through this early stage of psycho-education and further in their journey in finding their way to own their sexuality with self-worth and integrity.

Now the work can really begin.  In this document the psy/therapy bodies commit to ensure that all therapists are trained to a high level of cultural competence in working with LGB clients so that they know how to respond when a client presents in distress over their sexuality conflicts.  It’s not enough to just ban Conversion Therapy, it’s important that therapists feel confident in knowing how to work with requests for change in the wider context of that client’s life.

Very few therapy training courses in the UK adequately prepare therapists for working with LGB people (let alone all the other gender and sexual diversities that will be coming through their door).  This document gives a clear mandate that they should be and that the professional associations which regulate therapists will be supporting and monitoring this process.

Therapy is increasingly becoming a highly regulated profession.  Although such regulation is a highly contested area, (we might want to reflect for a moment on the licensing of human compassion), and I don’t want to get into the pros and cons of this in this particular blog.

Some people are concerned that therapists should be state licensed and they are worried that anyone can set themselves up as a ‘therapist’ and offer psychological treatment and help. This is true, but it would be virtually impossible to protect every title of support.  ‘Counsellor’ for example is being used by so many different trades and businesses, and loopholes would soon be found to get around any protected title that got enshrined in law.  We already have several national voluntary Registers which are being regulated by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) and the major therapy bodies are all well into the process of getting their members on those registers. Furthermore, state licensing does not prevent Doctors from abusing their patients, there is no evidence that it would prevent unethical practice by therapists.  

However, the PSA has no interest in addressing the standards of training in psy/professions as they only regulate the voluntary regulators themselves, not their registrants or training organisations. Therefore there remains tremendous discrepancy in how much quality and assessed training a psychotherapist or counsellor on a PSA registered register has actually undertaken. Only the psy/therapy training bodies can step up to ensuring adequate training in working with LGBT clients as a “voluntary duty” and the registering bodies show action consistent with their words by resourcing these developments in competency standards.  This is a task we’re actively involved in as the next focus is to ensure therapists are adequately trained!

We felt it was therefore also very important is to raise public awareness that any person being consulted for help should be a member of a professional body which has a complaints procedure and a code of ethics and that the professional has had specific training to undertake the work they’re seeking to do and that they are registered, insured and culturally competent and safe to be undertaking the work.

So far, the working group has focussed on Conversion Therapy as it pertains to sexuality change since this had been the major focus in the United States and the UK and was addressing the brief given to us by the DoH.  However, the tragic death of Leelah Alcorn   at the end of last year shows how important it is to ensure that we include gender variance in the definitions of what we mean by Conversion Therapies because trans kids are also being sent to therapists for their gender non conforming behaviour.  Again, this is largely within fundamentalist Christian families as was the case with Leelah, but some years ago Dr Ken Zucker, a fairly well respected Canadian psychiatrist came under criticism for offering conversion therapy to gender non-conforming children attending his clinic.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Zucker.  

As I understand it, Zucker’s point for trying to discourage gender non-conformity and cross gender play (with all the binary notions that plays into) was that Richard Green and others at the Tavi who did some research some 20-30 years ago on how many kids who expressed gender atypical behaviour in childhood and a desire to change gender, later into adolescence and adulthood didn’t ‘persist’ and ending up identifying as gay.  

However, we’re increasingly seeing larger numbers of gender variant young people feeling able to speak out about their gender dysphoria and services and support for gender variant young people are growing all the time. It would be interesting to see if more young people emerge from childhood and adolescence with a secure trans identity wherever they place themselves across the spectrum.  My own reading of the situation is, there will be many more ‘persisters’ rather than ‘desisters’ if the environment feels safe enough for them to be themselves, and not all will feel that a full and permanent transition of their gender in necessary.  I think we’ll be seeing more non binary and genderqueer identities as gender will be more of a spectrum, than the binary we’ve been seeing it as.

The MoU focused, (at the request of the DoH) on sexuality.  However, as psy/therapy bodies we shall be meeting on a regular basis over the next year to review the implementation of the recommendations and I and many others will be working to ensure that gender variance will be included in its implementation and explicitly included.

I’ve worked my entire career to try to raise the standard of culturally competent and safe therapeutic support for gender and sexual diversities. Often it’s felt like a cry in the wilderness, but finally it seems the therapy world is playing catch up and interested to listen to what we have to say and I am hopeful together we can improve the quality of care and support available for all gender and sexual diversities. 

Dominic Davies
Founder – Pink Therapy

Signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy include:

Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC), British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychology (BABCP), British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), British Psychological Society (BPS), Gay and Lesbian Doctors and Dentists (GLADD), National Counselling Society (NCS), NHS England, Project for Advice, Counselling & Education (PACE) Pink Therapy, Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych), Relate, Stonewall, UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

Curing the gays

Posted on by

Yesterday, I was invited to meet with Norman Lamb the Minister for Care and Support and the heads (or their representatives) of most of the major psy/therapy organisations (BACP, UKCP, BPS, National Counselling Society, British Psychoanalytic Council, Relate, BABCP, Assoc of Christian Counsellors, Chair of GLAAD representing the Royal College of GP’s) PACE and Stonewall. The topic of this ’round table’ was Conversion Therapy which the Minister told us he was very concerned about and wanted to establish what was happening and what the government might do about it.

Professor Michael King was there representing the Royal College of Psychiatrists and both he and I were invited to make presentations – him on the evidence of efficacy and harm and me, on the training needs for therapists and what the professional bodies should be doing. I’d been waiting for an opportunity like this for my entire career!

David Pink from UKCP gave some background to the issue as UKCP have been taking the lead on this for a while now and recently produced a booklet commissioned by the Government for the NHS Choices website.  Pink Therapy had a hand in this and it seems an important step at the Government making it clear that Conversion Therapy has no place in ethical health care for LGB people.

After Mike King gave some background on the history of conversion therapy and the lack of evidence for its benefit and plenty of evidence for it’s harm, I had around 20 minutes to present my own thoughts.

This is a slightly tidied up version of what I said:

Dept of Health Round Table on Conversion Therapy

Training & Policy

Whilst I’m concerned about religiously motivated Conversion Therapy and have been professionally active on this issue for over two decades, I’m much more concerned with Professor King’s data about 1:6 mainstream therapists of your organisations agreeing to contracts to reduce SSA or cure people. Most of these people are not overtly religiously motivated and so might not feel your Conversion Therapy policy statements apply to them.

These were well meaning mainstream and secular therapists who were poorly trained and inadequately prepared to know how to respond to a highly distressed client. Training in understanding what is different about working with gender or sexual minorities is either absent or patchy in most British therapy training courses and so therapists don’t know how to respond and often have little cultural competency in understanding the social contexts in which their clients live. Noble humanistic concepts about the clients right to self determination are in conflict with what might be a lack of choice over the gender of their sexual partners. The people presenting for ‘gay cure’ are generally likely to be those who have a fixed and enduring sexual identity (Kinsey 6’s) and whereas sexuality can be quite plastic for many people and there are plenty of examples of situational homosexuality amongst heterosexuals in single sex environments and sexual fluidity over a lifespan for many LGB and T people, the people seeking ‘cure’ are unlikely to be those people who feel unable to change.

In some contexts (lesbian and gay Muslim especially) lesbians and gay men may be facing honour killings from family members or alienation from their community and families. They maybe literally pleading for their lives. 

I’m also interested to know how those organisations which have Christian Counsellors or Pastoral Counsellors like Assoc Christian Counselling and BACP’s Association for Pastoral and Spiritual Care Counselling will monitor whether conversion therapy is being undertaken organisations?  Changing policy and forbidding something doesn’t make it go away. 

I’m interested to hear what other colleagues are doing to ensure their Policy Statements are translated into action and how they propose to train their members in ensuring they can respond appropriately to requests for change.

However, it goes wider than this in delivering culturally safe and appropriate mental health services. An example is that whilst we now have full equality in Gay Marriage, we should bear in mind that research shows that between 50-80% gay male couples are are not sexually exclusive. So whilst Relate has become less heteronormative over the years, it is still virtually impossible for a gay couple to get help in opening up their sexual relationship, when the training of the therapists in Relate has been about helping couples maintain sexual fidelity and keeping families together. 

Research is showing that Bisexuals get offered conversion therapy from mainstream counselling organisations too! Some therapists feel they should just help the bisexual pick one identity and either be heterosexual or gay. (Ref: Bisexuality Report and Richards and Barker, 2013)

My recommendations

  1. Accrediting a course, should mean the course gets audited for what they are teaching about working with gender and sexual diversity clients. I’m interested in therapists being culturally safe to offer therapy to sex minority communities. So that LGBT people are afforded dignity to live within their own values and norms. Such training in understanding developmental theory, life stages and relationship models etc should be integrated and run throughout whole curriculum and not be an optional add on for a single workshop. The BPS Guidelines for working therapeutically with gender and sexual minority clients are most helpful and I’d like courses seeking accreditation to be asked to embed these guidelines in their training of therapists so that throughout the curricula therapists are learning how to work with diversity.
  2. Post Qualified counsellors faced with requests for change need CPD to help them better handle these issues. A big stick or forbidding conversion  therapy is not helpful.  You have a duty of care to your members to support them in know how best to effectively respond to genuine distress and requests for ‘cure’.
  3. Therapists and supervisors need training in how to work with the issues. Our own workshops for supervisors were frequently cancelled due to low take up, it seems supervisors (who may well have been trained at a time when homosexuality was still classified as a mental disorder) feel they are above or beyond the need for training in how to supervise therapy with LGBT clients.
  4. Specifically with regard to Requests for ‘Cure’, I recommend a training pack be produced – with video, experiential exercises and some theoretical material and resources which addresses how to work with these issues. We should then offer to train counsellor trainers in how to use the pack so that they can then deliver training to their students.  It would be good if the Dept of Health could help us produce this material – making a video with a Muslim actor playing a gay client who is conflict with his cultural and faith beliefs and sexual orientation.

You will see I’ve used the concept of Cultural Safety.  This arose in Nurse Education in New Zealand and here’s a short explanation:
Cultural safety relates to the experience of the recipient of nursing service and extends beyond cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity. It provides consumers of nursing services with the power to comment on practices and contribute to the achievement of positive health outcomes and experiences. It also enables them to participate in changing any negatively perceived or experienced service. The Council’s definition of cultural safety is:

The effective nursing practice of a person or family from another culture, and is determined by that person or family. Culture includes, but is not restricted to, age or generation; gender; sexual orientation; occupation and socioeconomic status; ethnic origin or migrant experience; religious or spiritual belief; and disability

The nurse delivering the nursing service will have undertaken a process of reflection on his or her own cultural identity and will recognise the impact that his or her personal culture has on his or her professional practice. Unsafe cultural practice comprises any action which diminishes, demeans or disempowers the cultural identity and well being of an individual. 

http://nursingcouncil.org.nz/content/download/721/2871/file/Guidelines%20for%20cultural%20safety,%20the%20Treaty%20of%20Waitangi,%20and%20Maori%20health%20in%20nursing%20education%20and%20practice.pdf [emphasis added]

After the meeting, I had warm and encouraging approaches from the National Counselling Society and the British Psychoanalytic Council who want us to advise them on what they can be doing. Also within hours the Chief Exec of Relate emailed me asking me to meet with their Head of Training.  Interestingly, the representative from BACP remained silent throughout the meeting and afterwards.  I hope I shouldn’t be reading too much into this.

There are plans for a follow up meeting and maybe a Memorandum of Understanding which we will hopefully agree.

This is the first time I’ve seen these professional associations coming together on an issue. They are essentially rivals and many competing for members. It was good to see them in agreement about Conversion Therapy and open to hearing my proposals.

Dominic Davies
Director