From Screw Bronze via A Tenable Belief via Some Guys Are Normal:

In 2001, a peer-reviewed study by Drs. Ariel Shidlo and Michael Schroeder measured the harm caused by exgay programs to 202 former participants.

Some Guys Are Normal observes:

Study subjects: 202
Number that were no longer struggling and were fully heterosexual: 8
Of those 8, number that were not employees or volunteers of ex-gay groups: 1
Number that felt they had failed: 176
Number who felt conversion had done long term harm: 155
Number who attempted suicide during therapy: 23
Number who attempted suicide after therapy: 11
Number who reported spiritual harm: 100

So, according to this study, 1 person (arguably 8) of 202 were turned straight through therapy–a result I’d imagine was the goal of the people that entered the ex-gay therapies. At the same time, 100 had their faith dramatically harmed by therapy (if you’re Christian, we’re talking about their salvation here). And nearly 4 times the number that turned straight tried to kill themselves during therapy.

The study was buried by the exgay movement, which should have publicized the results if Exodus, NARTH and PFOX (for example) were concerned about therapy clients providing truly informed consent to future therapy — or if these organizations were truly concerned about helping future exgays avoid whatever mistakes were made by the therapists of those who were found by the study to have been harmed.

Instead, these organizations exaggerated the results of another study — that of Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who in the same year studied a pool of approximately 200 exgay activists to determine the extent to which any of them had experienced “change” in sexual orientation.

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