 It hasn’t been easy growing up gay in the south even in a much more accepting world. From conservative family members to homophobic class mates and teachers, the stress of trying to be oneself in an unaccepting society can be overwhelming. I personally have had to deal with much disapproval and hatred from my own family over the subject in the past. We have had intense battles and I have almost been kicked out of my home, and two years later it is still in the back of my mind. Before I came out to my family and friends I experienced a lot of other troubles, but they came from my own mind. I come from a family with a history of anxiety disorders, but discovering I was gay as a teenager only fast tracked the growth of my anxiety and made self-acceptance and the rest of the process that much harder for me. Anxiety made me doubt I would ever accomplish anything, that I would never have a normal life because I am gay, and that everyone would be better off without me. Time has passed since that point in my life and my anxiety is now under control, and I am starting to finally have a healthy relationship with my family.

The same cannot be said for the rest of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, or LGBT, community. Many LGBT individuals still fight against depression, anxiety, and substance use more than heterosexual individuals due to conversion therapy and other damaging stimuli. According to an article by Walter Brockington, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender people have higher levels of stress than heterosexual individuals. LGBT people are also 2 to 3 times more likely than heterosexual people to report high levels of mental distress. These stress levels can be caused by many different factors. These factors can be family members, discrimination in the work place or school, social stigmas, conversion therapy, or even abuse. Mental illness, wither LGBT or not, is a subject not mentioned enough in society today. 

Most people dismiss mental illness and do not see it as an actual problem, and some like to use “being anxious or depressed” as a joke. There are also some that see mental illness as people being crazy, and those that seek help for it as weaker or lesser beings. Truth be told mental illness affects more people than expected, and due to stigmas today they refuse to seek the help that they need so that they do not get ridiculed by others. My mother and I are examples of those kind of people. For many years we recognized we had a problem, but due to being afraid of being called weak for needing medicine to help us, we refused to get any. Eventually we realized it does not make us weak or pathetic for needing a bit of help, but there are some people that never come to that realization. For the LGBT community, asking for help can be much harder. Mental illnesses can have a strong tie to gender identity and sexuality, and if someone is not out yet asking for help can only be that much harder. 

The transgender community has received much attention in the last year over the use of public restrooms. This may not seem like much of an issue to some, but is only the tip of the iceberg of what discrimination transgender people can face. One study of 402 transgender persons, ‘Stigma, Mental Health, and Resilience in an Online Sample of the US Transgender Population’, investigated the different forms of discrimination they had come across. According to their finding, 56% of those individuals reported experiencing verbal harassment from family, coworkers, or peers. 37% of the subjects experienced employment discrimination, either when applying for a job or during their employment. 19% of the subjects reported having experienced physical violence, either from a partner, family member, or even the rare random attacker. Of those individuals, it was shown that transgender people of color experienced the most physical violence. 

An unfortunate example of the mistreatment of the transgender community is the suicide of Leelah Alcorn in 2015. Leelah was a 17-year-old male to female, or MTF, transgender teenager. She experienced disapproval from her family and they refused to acknowledge her true identify. They only would refer to her by her birth name, Josh, and male pronouns. Leelah was forced by her parents to go to a conversion therapist attempting to cure her, but instead worsened her depression. Conversion therapy is the process to ‘fix’ gay men and women by turning them straight, or making a transgender person no longer identify with the gender they feel they are supposed to be. In her suicide note she said, “I only got more Christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help...”. She also stated in her note that she felt that she “…never actually got the therapy (she) needed to cure (her) depression…” (McCoy). 

After not receiving the help she needed for so long, Leelah unfortunately committed suicide. Hours later her mother posted online after her death “…(Josh) was out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck…”. Leelah’s mother falsified the details of Leelah’s death and her mother did not use the proper name or pronouns when referring to her child. This proved to Leelah’s friends and those who mourned her death that her mother tried to finally erase the existence of her child’s true identify (McCoy). Leelah’s last wish was to hope that her death would shed light on the challenges transgender people face today. She wrote that she wishes one day transgender people would finally be “…(T)reated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights…” (McCoy).

Suicidal behavior is a major problem that all LGBT people may experience in one form or the other. It has been found that the rates of suicide attempts are between two to seven times higher in high school students who identify as LGBT compared to those who identify as heterosexual (Haas). Since it has been found that LGBT people are at a higher risk for mental illnesses, the rate of suicide substantiates the claim. This also corroborates the fact that those illnesses are there, and they need to be treated. These mental illnesses and suicidal behavior can worsen due to conversion therapy, mental and physical abuse, and other such elements. It has been discovered in studies about suicide that LGBT men who were in same-sex domestic partnerships were eight times more likely to commit suicide compared to heterosexual men. LGBT men are almost twice as likely to commit suicide as an unmarried man.

Suicide is but one atrocious example of the damage can be done by conversion therapy. Conversion therapy, as stated earlier, is the process of trying to ‘fix’ LGBT men and women by attempting to make them straight, or trying to make someone a transgender person be the gender they are not supposed to be. In the article written by Douglas Haldeman, multiple studies on the process of converting LGBT men and women and their outcomes after ‘treatment’ had finished were analyzed. All studies had shown that next to no people afterwards felt heterosexual desires. These individuals instead acquired feelings of shame, self-loathing, and other negative thoughts about their sexuality (225). According the Haldeman, psychologists are supposed to use ethical methods to ensure the well-being and mental health of everyone. Conversion therapy fails in this regard since its main tactic is to undermine one’s identity and state of mind through prejudices and homophobia (225,226). 

Art therapy, on the other hand, has recently been showing positive influences on those within the LGBT community. Art therapy is the process of using different mediums, or art supplies, to convey a patient’s feelings that they may have trouble saying out loud or haven’t fully realized yet. The patient and their therapist use the art and other techniques employed by regular therapy to help the patient come to terms with something or try to move past a difficult event. This process has been proven affective when working with children, cancer patients, the elderly, and now is being employed with the LGBT community. According to ‘Coming Out Through Art: A Review of Art Therapy with LGBT Clients’ art therapists understand that homosexuality is no longer categorized as a mental illness or a disease according by the American Psychological Association. With this as the core of working with LGBT people, art therapists can use whatever methods they believe would be effective to help their patients with what they are struggling with. Art therapists have proven that the use of art during coming can help to strengthen one’s sense of emotional safety. They have also proven that it can help to dissolve internalized homophobia (172, 173).

The opposing view believes that conversion therapy can be extremely beneficial to society. According to an article on anti-LGBT marriage and lifestyle, conversion therapy can fix the decay of families today due to the anti-Christian behavior of LGBT people. They believe that LGBT people and families can negatively impact the lives of children. This individuals in their eyes will lead the children to having mental illnesses and poor values. According to one of the opposing view’s websites, they claim that teen pregnancy is more likely to happen if that teenager was raised by LGBT parents. One of their most important worries is that the rise in people identifying and living as LGBT will undermine America’s Christian valued society and ultimately damage everyone. In this instance, they are particularly talking about allowing same sex marriages and how it will affect people. The opposing view believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman, as God intended. This is followed by the statement that says heterosexual marriage domesticates men into being more religious individuals, thus showing the power of union of man and wife. They also say men will be more sexually loyal to their wives, drink less, and make more money when married to a woman. None of this can be accomplished in gay marriages, since it does not have a man and a woman to fill both traditional roles. The opposing view believes that through conversion therapy they can help fix society by curing homosexuality, bisexuality, and being transgender. Through this process, they can save the lives of children, create stronger families and relationships, and make better citizens and followers of God. 

Respectfully acknowledging and understanding the opposing view’s reasons for their argument, it can be said without a doubt that their argument can be proven false. It has been shown repeatedly that there is no actual data to back any of their claims that conversion therapy works. Research into their studies that showed their methods and their process were a success were later proven to have been falsified, or had not actually been conducted at all. It had also been discovered that the studies refused to put in their findings the negative consequences arose from conversion therapy. As stated earlier in this paper, in 2005 all major psychiatric groups determined that homosexuality and transgenderism was no longer to be seen as a mental illness or defect (Pelton-Sweet). These groups have also determined through numerous studies on conversion therapy that being LGBT cannot be cured, since there is nothing there to be cured. Conversion therapy fails to help people due to the fact it causes mental illnesses to worsen and can lead to more suicidal behavior.

In a TED talk Dr. James O’Keefe spoke about his personal experience and studies on homosexuality due to his gay son. His research, from what he has seen, has shown that being homosexual may in some ways create a better family. O’Keefe’s studies say that homosexual children help create better families that are more loving and accepting to society as a whole. It may also be a biological benefit, almost acting like a birth control so the families population does not get too large. 

Leelah Alcorn and other LGBT people that have taken their lives during conversion therapy can never tell us all that they experienced. Those that have managed to survive conversion therapy though can tells us so they can teach us about the toll it takes on a person. Carl Charles is an example someone who was forced into conversion therapy but managed to get through it. His parents forced him into it when he was a teenager to ‘fix’ him. Carl wrote an article specifically as recalling his experiences with Michael, his conversion therapist at his family’s church. Speaking about the first session with Michael, Carl said, “I remember the first-time Michael slammed his fist down on his desk and screamed ‘You are not gay!” Carl said Michael would scream profanities and tell him things such as, “You will burn in hell! Jesus died so that you can repent from your sins!” His so-called therapist would lock them both in a small room with no windows in the basement of the church for hours during their sessions. Michael would distastefully use his religion to try to force Carl to hate himself, instead of using it to try to help him learn to love and accept himself. While further recalling his past, Carl stated that, “(Michael) often asked me sexually explicit questions...” making him extremely uncomfortable and often upsetting him. Some of the things Carl experienced was determined that they “cannot recount here both because of their content and because the memory is too painful.” Carl said that he learned how to try to deal with the situation he was forced into. His exact words are, “Eventually I just sat there, listened to him yell at me, and tried to block him out.”

Society and the social norm have changed so much since millennials were born. Before recent years being gay, bisexual, transgender, or however one identifies wasn’t to be discussed. Many people within the community were not open about their sexuality or gender identity. Now there is almost a renaissance surrounding the LGBT community, showing the beauty that lies within it. From Olympic athletes such as Tom Daley and Gus Kenworthy, to actors such as Laverne Cox, Angelina Jolie, and Neil Patrick Harris, the LGBT community is showing that they are here and they are just like anyone else on this planet. Still there are those that do not support the community and support conversion therapy and believe it can do much good, and are entitled to their opinion. We also need to start teaching people that having a mental illness isn’t a bad thing or mean that you are broken, and that it is ok to ask for help. In the end whether you are LGBT, anti-LGBT, Christian, Muslim, or Atheist, we can all agree that everyone just wants to be happy. Hopefully we can make progress in trying to change things to make a world that is more more loving and caring towards all.
