The clearest evidence against conversion therapy is not a statistic. It is the people who lived through it. Here are their accounts, collected by Conversion Truth for Families, alongside what the research and the law now say.
Key Takeaways
- Conversion therapy is the attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Major U.S. professional medical and mental health organizations have opposed these practices, citing lack of evidence of effectiveness and potential harms.
- A 2019 study in JAMA Psychiatry of 27,715 transgender adults found that exposure to these efforts was associated with roughly twice the odds of a lifetime suicide attempt, and was associated with roughly four times the odds when exposure occurred before age 10.
- In one study, lesbian, gay and bisexual young adults reporting high family rejection during adolescence were 8.4 times more likely to report a suicide attempt, according to the Family Acceptance Project.
- Survivors describe three recurring losses: their family, their place in their church, and their trust in themselves.
- After Chiles v. Salazar (decided March 31, 2026), protections in roughly two dozen states face new legal challenges, even as the medical consensus on the harm is unchanged.
What Is Conversion Therapy, and Why Do Doctors Reject It?
Conversion therapy refers to practices intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Some change-oriented practices have been described as reparative therapy or by other labels; the relevant distinction is whether the intervention seeks a predetermined change in orientation or identity.
Major medical and mental health organizations have raised consistent concerns. The American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Association have each concluded the practice is unethical and does not work. The evidence against it is why organizations that once promoted “ex-gay” change have shut down, and why Conversion Truth for Families maintains a plain-language explainer on why the major medical organizations oppose it. The strongest case, though, comes from families themselves.
What Does Conversion Therapy Do to a Family Bond?
Survivor accounts describe how it can strain or sever family relationships. Some change-oriented approaches tell a young person that their identity is a wound caused by their own parents. That teaching does exactly what you would expect: it drives children away from the people meant to protect them.
Chris Dowling, a Catholic who spent a decade in the practice from ages 18 to 28, first heard the theory in a confession booth, when a priest responded to his disclosure by asking about his relationship with his father. There is no scientific support for the idea that parenting causes a person to be gay, but Chris believed it, and it cost him ten years with the people he loved. He also spent at least $50,000 of his own money, at one point taking out a medical loan for inpatient care. The reconciliation came only after he came out: the family the theory took from him is the one he is closest to today.
The same mechanism runs through other accounts in the Real Stories collection. Dr. Matt Salmon, a psychiatrist in the Washington, D.C. area who is also a survivor, says the practice “asserted that my parents were to blame,” and that the blame bred years of resentment. He describes a harm that spreads outward: parents, friends, and faith communities grieve the distance it creates, then struggle to recognize a survivor’s eventual healing as healing at all.
Research also documents associations between family rejection and mental health outcomes. A Family Acceptance Project study found that lesbian, gay and bisexual young adults reporting high family rejection during adolescence had 8.4 times the odds of reporting a suicide attempt, a finding published in the journal Pediatrics. Conversion Truth for Families connects that evidence to the lived accounts on its page covering the documented harms of the practice.
How Does It Push Young People Away From Their Church?
By forcing a choice no child should have to make: your faith or yourself. Survivors are clear that the deepest wound often comes not from being different, but from the community that treats difference as something to exorcise.
Jason, raised in a born-again Pentecostal family, was subjected to an attempted exorcism at twelve when an uncle, a minister, tried to cast out what the family understood as a demon. What makes his account instructive is that the harm arrived through someone he trusted and who, he believes, acted out of love. Jason later set out to write a book proving a person could change, and finished one arguing the opposite. He remains, in his words, “100% a believing Pentecostal.” His faith survived, but he is candid that many do not: loss of faith is itself a recognized harm, cataloged in the NCLR report drawing on APA findings, and research links faith-identity conflict to higher suicide risk and to people leaving religion altogether.
Meg Baatz, who has spent a decade in LGBTQ ministry, frames the practice as “a false gospel,” one that treats a person’s longing for closeness as a danger rather than the very thing that helps people grow. Her point for churches is blunt: much of the pain LGBTQ people carry was inflicted by the faith community itself, and even she, having followed a traditional sexual ethic, still cannot speak fully honestly with her own Christian family. That is the legacy these programs leave behind.
What Is the Mental Health Toll on a Survivor?
A belief that outlasts the sessions: that you are broken and will never be enough. Survivors describe this as the lasting injury, one that can take years to undo.
Dr. Matt Salmon puts it plainly. The practice, he says, installed the conviction that “I was broken, I needed fixing,” a voice he has accepted may never fully leave despite years of his own treatment. He also names a cruel second injury he sees in his patients: because the harm was delivered under the banner of therapy, survivors often fear the real therapy that could help them.
Dr. Bobbie Glass, a Louisville educator, transgender woman, and person of faith, says the deepest wounds were not what happened during the program but how many years it took afterward to trust that she was not defective. For years, she says, she believed “healing meant changing who I was.” Her recovery began only when people stopped trying to change her. Her account tracks the evidence that the elevated risk of depression, anxiety, and trauma follows people well into adulthood.
How Much Does It Raise Suicide Risk?
Substantially, and the numbers are consistent across independent sources. A 2019 JAMA Psychiatry cross-sectional study of 27,715 transgender adults found that recalled exposure to gender identity conversion efforts was associated with roughly twice the odds of a lifetime suicide attempt, or more than four times the odds for those reporting exposure before age 10. The study found no difference in harm between secular and religious providers.
Youth-focused data points the same way. The Trevor Project reports that LGBTQ young people subjected to conversion therapy are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide, and a separate analysis it published estimated the practice and its downstream harms cost the United States an estimated $9.23 billion a year. One peer-reviewed analysis of transgender adolescents found exposure was associated with a 17-percentage-point higher risk of a suicide attempt and more than doubled the risk of running away from home.
There is a protective counterweight, and it is within any parent’s reach. The Trevor Project reported that LGBTQ young people with at least one accepting adult were 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the previous year.
Where Do the Laws on Conversion Therapy Stand Now?
They are in flux. On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Chiles v. Salazar in an 8-1 ruling written by Justice Gorsuch. The Court held that Colorado’s ban, as applied to a licensed counselor using only talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint and must satisfy strict First Amendment scrutiny. It sent the case back to the lower courts and, importantly, took no position on whether conversion therapy works, without deciding the constitutionality of restrictions on physical interventions.
The practical stakes are large. As the Human Rights Campaign notes, the ruling undermines protections for minors in roughly 23 states and the District of Columbia. Legal analysts at SCOTUSblog observed that the decision was broad enough to draw Justices Kagan and Sotomayor into the majority, while the Trevor Project’s explainer stresses what the case was not about: the safety of the practice, which the medical consensus still rejects.
Families retain one longstanding avenue for accountability. In the landmark Ferguson v. JONAH case, a New Jersey jury found that a conversion therapy provider had committed consumer fraud by promising a change it could not deliver, establishing that these programs can be prosecuted as a deceptive business practice.
What Actually Protects a Child Instead?
Acceptance. The same research that measures the harm of rejection measures the protection of support: supportive family environments are associated with better mental health outcomes for LGBTQ young people. The survivor accounts are not an argument against faith. Jason kept his. Dr. Bobbie Glass kept hers, learning that “asking questions is not the opposite of faith.” Chris Dowling attends church with his husband and calls himself pro-family.
The scale of the problem makes the point worth repeating. A 2024 Trevor Project survey of more than 50,000 LGBTQ youth found that 5 percent had undergone conversion therapy. Survivor literature keeps growing too, including the 2025 anthology Shame-Sex Attraction, which collects seventeen first-person accounts of the practice across North America and Australia.
Conversion Truth for Families organizes resources and FAQs for parents of faith around a message reflected in these accounts: you do not have to choose between your child and your faith.
The Choice That Remains
The most quoted moment in the collection belongs to Brandon Boulware, a Missouri lawyer and son of a Methodist minister who spent years forcing his transgender daughter toward the gender on her birth certificate. He describes the result without flinching: “I had a child who did not smile.” The turning point came when she asked whether she could play with neighbors only if she changed into boy clothes, and he realized he was teaching her that being good meant being someone else. When he and his wife stopped, he describes a positive change in their family relationship. He now has, in his words, a confident, smiling, happy daughter.
That is the real choice conversion therapy puts to a family, and it is the choice Conversion Truth for Families exists to clarify. Not faith against a child, but love against fear. The survivors who have shared their stories lost years, savings, and in some cases nearly their lives before they found the far side of that choice. They are telling other families there is a shorter way there.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for general informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical, mental health, legal, or other professional advice. The experiences and perspectives described are individual accounts and should not be interpreted as representative of every person’s experience. Research findings, legal standards, and professional guidance may change over time. Readers should consult an appropriately qualified professional regarding their individual circumstances and should not rely on this article to make medical, mental health, or legal decisions.
