Athens Pride. Credit :Camerawalker /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0Greece banned conversion therapy, or a widely criticized method of attempting to change one’s sexual or gender identity, for minors on Wednesday.
The bill, which passed in parliament, will impose hefty fines and even prison terms on psychologists and other mental health professionals who conduct conversion therapy on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) minors without their explicit consent.
Additionally, advertising any kind of conversion therapy is forbidden under the law.
Conversion therapy, often dubbed “reparative therapy” has been discounted by psychologists and human rights experts across the world as completely ineffective. Research has repeatedly shown that there is no method of changing one’s sexuality.
Greece bans conversion therapy, advertising practice
As the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT advocacy group in the US, notes, “minors are especially vulnerable” to the practice, and it can have tragic impacts on those who receive it, such as “depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.”
