So long as it is received voluntarily, you should be able to subscribe to whatever therapy treatments you want. It seems to me that it is obvious it doesn't work as advertised and is more damaging than beneficial, but you should still be able to get it it you want and are aware of the risks.

Conversion therapy is damaging, and people undergoing it will not be making an informed decision to do so.

• Conversion therapy is extremely damaging and dangerous. A study in the American journal of public health found that ‘LGBTQ youth who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year’.

• In order to freely choose to undergo treatment, people need to be informed of risks. This is unlikely to be the case with conversion therapy as it is usually carried out on the false premise that being LGBTQ+ is a sickness to be cured. As conversion therapy is seen as corrective, the fact that it causes psychological damage will not be believed or acknowledged.

• This is not a simple case of making an informed choice, like choosing whether to smoke or not. Many people who undergo conversion therapy come from religious communities made up of family, and built on deeply rooted ideas about sexuality and gender roles. It can be difficult to see if an ideology is false and damaging in these circumstances.

It is one thing to choose not to live a certain lifestyle, however, people who believe they need to be 'cured' are victims. Those trying to carry out psychological abuse should not be free to do so.

Conversion therapy is a pseudoscientific practice of trying to change an individual’s sexual orientation using psychological, physical or spiritual interventions. It is based on an assumption that being lesbian, gay, bi or trans is a mental illness that can be “cured”.

There has been no reliable evidence to show that conversion therapy is successful, but many medical institutions have spoken on how it can be potentially harmful. Specifically, medical, scientific and government organisations in the US and UK have expressed concern over the ethics and efficiency of the process. For example, the American Psychiatric Association opposes the treatment and argues that the advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating unscientific views about sexual orientation.

In the UK, all major counselling and psychotherapy bodies, as well as the NHS, have concluded that conversion therapy is dangerous and have condemned it by signing a Memorandum of Understanding. In the US, although no national ban exists, 20 US states and several individual counties have banned therapy attempting to change sexual orientation.