Fifty Shades of Pink

The prevalence of conversion therapy stems from the ingrained stigma around queerness in the society, leading to the pathologisation of sexual orientation as a mental illness

- Apeksha Priyadarshini

RISHI was in her late teens when she had her heart broken. As it often happens in love, passion and care flourished in abundance between her and her partner at the beginning. Eventually, however, he wanted to move on and marry a woman. Having encountered disappointment with the man of her dreams, Rishi thought of turning to the only other man she hoped to find solace in—her father. “I wanted to hug my father and cry,” says Rishi, now 22 and based in Coimbatore. “I was undergoing severe depression. So, I went and told him, ‘I only want to remain your child. I don’t want to get married.’ I trusted him to comfort me.” Unfortunately, that was not to be. Rishi’s father decided to get her ‘cured’ for her heartbreak. “When I asked him why he was taking me to a psychiatrist, he told me that I’m depressed due to sleep deprivation.” That's how Rishi was compelled to embark on the horrific journey of “conversion therapy”.

It has been more than three decades since the declassification of homosexuality as a “disease” within the global psychiatric discourse. While the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as an illness from the second edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1973, the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from its International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) in 1990.

However, the Indian medical infrastructure dragged its feet in depathologising queerness. It was only in 2018 that the Indian Psychiatric Society issued a statement clarifying that homosexuality is not a disease. It further went on to state that “there is no scientific evidence at all that attempts to convert a person's orientation succeed in any manner”, urging for any therapy in this direction to be stopped immediately.