The report, which SAMHSA released today, concludes that, in fact, such therapy can be “devastatingly harmful” to those who undergo its treatment.

SAMHSA and the American Psychological Association (APA) convened a panel of advisers in July to examine the scientific and clinical data behind conversion, or reparative, therapy—a treatment that aims to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The ensuing report, “Ending Conversion Therapy: Supporting and Affirming LGBTQ Youth,” found that the therapy is based on pseudoscience and did not meet the professional and ethical standards of the mental health professions. At best, these therapies are ineffective, and at worst, they can be profoundly detrimental, said Fisher.

“These therapies can involve very harmful treatments such as shock therapy—that is, showing an individual [photos of]a particular gender and shocking the individual so as to prevent a sexual response,” said Fisher, the Marie Ward Doty Endowed Chair and a professor of psychology.

“It can also involve berating and focusing on the immorality of the sexual orientation or gender identity. Basically, it’s a punitive form of treatment that has no scientific or clinical basis.”

Experts were called upon to examine the controversial therapy following the suicide of transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn, 17, whose parents forced her to participate in conversion therapy. The public outcry following her death led to the drafting of Leelah’s Law, which would ban the therapy.

SAMHSA’s report is an important step in the White House’s commitment to expanding the number of states who enact the law, said Fisher. Some studies estimate as many as one-third of children and adolescents who identify as a sexual or gender minority has undergone some kind of conversion therapy.

“Children, youth, and even young adults can experience post-traumatic stress disorder as a result, because it’s so stressful to be under these punitive and harsh conditions. It can also lead to depression or can increase a sense of dysphoria and further alienate individuals from their families,” Fisher said. “And, as in Leelah’s case, it can result in suicide.”

The report indicates that variations in gender identity and sexual orientation are normal in children. However, because of the prejudice and stigma they face, LGBT youth are particularly vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses.

“But it’s not because of these children’s identity [as LGBT individuals]—it’s because of the way they’re treated by their families, their schools, and society,” Fisher said. “These are the conditions… that any disenfranchised and marginalized group may experience.”

The way to support sexual and gender minority youth, she said, is to affirm and accept each individual and to support his or her need for self-expression. The idea is not to push young people in one direction or another, but rather to give them space to explore.

Moreover, mental health professionals, physicians, school personnel, and others who work with children and adolescents need additional training in LGBT issues to better understand the needs of these populations, Fisher said.

“The issues included in this report are intended to enhance the lives and well-being of sexual and gender minority youth by helping to ensure they receive informed, evidence-based, and bias-free services. The systematic elimination of conversion type therapies is critical to the goal of reducing the health disparities facing this vulnerable population.”

Read more on the Ethics and Society blog.

Tough questions to answer in any format, but are they too tough for a blog? Elizabeth Yuko, Ph.D., bioethicist and program administrator of the HIV Prevention Research Ethics Training Institute at the Center for Ethics Education, doesn’t think so.

Since starting at Fordham in the spring of 2013, Yuko helped launched the Ethics and Society blog with the encouragement and support of Celia Fisher, Ph.D., Marie Ward Doty Chair and professor of psychology and the center’s director.

“We really wanted to establish a blog to generate ethics dialogue within and outside the University and to provide greater access to the center’s many resources, including continuously updated ethics bibliographies, scales designed to measure ethical attitudes and moral reasoning, and videos and lectures from the HIV institute and annual center conferences,” said Fisher.

Blog contributors have included Fordham faculty and national and international scholars who approach bioethics from multiple perspectives including the humanities, sciences, and medicine. But Yuko said anyone who has an interest in ethics can contribute, whether their background is in business, law, media, or the arts and sciences.

“Ethics is such an interdisciplinary field. We’re hoping to attract a very large part of the global bioethics community,” she said.

Yuko is the supervising editor of Student Voices, a newly created section of the blog edited by students enrolled in the Masters in Ethics and Society Program and the newly established bioethics minor. This section will allow Fordham students “a chance to delve deeper into issues that they might not have time to explore in the classroom and to weigh in on the contemporary issues alongside experts,” she said.

Social justice remains at the foreground of every post, and both sides of an issue are always presented.

“We appreciate the fact that the Jesuit tradition allows and encourages this type of discourse,” Yuko said.

Posts aren’t regularly scheduled. The editors prefer quality to quantity, and although the format is casual, the tone isn’t.

“They’re opinion pieces that are backed by scholarship, so it’s not chatty,” said Fisher. “We ask students to incorporate references to facts and opinions from established academic and respected media publications.”

(Ed Note: On April 28 at 6 p.m. on the Lincoln Center campus, the center’s annual conference explores The Value of Liberal Arts Education and America’s Future.)