Indian Psychiatry’s Continuing Fascination with treating Homosexuality
Indian Psychiatry’s Continuing Fascination with treating Homosexuality
by Dr. Anirudh Kala
Till about fifty years back, all over the world, many believed that homosexuality is a disease and can be treated. It was even listed in the official classification of diseases in various countries. In 1973 however, the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM) which is the official classification of diseases in the United States removed homosexuality from the list. The WHO followed suit after some years and removed it from its list of diseases called the International Classifification of Diseases (ICD). The message to the doctors world over including the psychiatrists was loud and clear; stop trying to treat homosexuality since it is not even a disease and that it is a normal variation of sexuality which is a spectrum rather than a single codified sexual behaviour.
However, many psychiatrists in India not only continued to believe that it is a disease but also continued to treat it with what they called ‘Conversion Therapy’ on hapless young men and women brought to them by desperate parents who would do anything to make their wards straight and ‘normal’.
Conversion Therapy (CT) was (and is!) a set of procedures crudely based on principles of Behaviour Therapy which posits that any behaviour which is rewarded gets repeated and any behaviour which is punished gets extinguished overtime. In a particularly dainty version of treatment, during the session, imagining sex with a person of opposite sex is followed by pleasant images or music and imagining a same sex person with sexual intent is accompanied with an aversive stimulus like a mild electric current. As late as 1983, Indian Journal of Psychiatry, the official Journal of Indian Psychiatric Society published a paper entitled, “Homosexuality: A Study of Treatment and Outcome”. Six ‘exclusively homosexuals,’ five males and one female between the ages of 19 and 30 were treated and “in five of them the therapy was successful”. The rewarding stimulus used was personal favourite music and the aversive stimulus was 50 volts current! The study was done at the AIIMS, New Delhi and was presented at the annual conference of Indian Psychiatric Society at Bombay. The paper can be read in full here-
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3012326/pdf/IJPsy-25-235.pdf.
The practice however decreased over the years as the world including the Indian psychiatrists accepted the fact of normalcy of a wide variety of sexual behaviours including homosexuality. However desperate parents continued to approach psychiatrists and many psychiatrists including some very senior ones continued to believe that homosexuality is a disease and needs treatment.
In January 2014, the then President of Indian Psychiatric Society Dr. Indira Sharma at the annual conference of the Society, during her speech from the podium of the society said that homosexuality was un-natural, homosexuals made rest of the people uncomfortable and should seek psychiatric help. The talk was widely reported in the press [TOI article here] countrywide brouhaha [see editorial footnote].
I happened at that time to be the Chairperson of Task Force on Mental Health Legislation of the IPS and wrote to the then President and the VP requesting for some action even a symbolic one against the outgoing President. When nothing like that happened, I resigned from the membership of the society. I received several concerned calls asking why was I doing it, was I gay! I replied, no, I was doing it because I was a scientist and medical science said homosexuality is normal and should be left alone.
Things improved some years later, particularly because of the vociferous stand by the younger psychiatrists. For the first time in 2018, under the leadership of one of the best Presidents so far, Dr. Ajit Bhide, the IPS came out with a clear position statement on its website, saying that since homosexuality is not a disease no treatment is necessary. What helped further clear the air was the Supreme Court judgement of 2018 de-criminalising homosexuality.
At the same time the adage ‘More things change, more they remain the same’ continued to apply. According to Mariwala Health Initiative as reported in 2022 by the Scroll, 80% of the queer persons still go through either faith healing or the equally mumbo-jumbo Conversion Therapy from psychiatrists.
So much so that the Madras High Court in June 2021, on the plea of a queer rights NGO, ordered that all forms of Conversion Therapy were to be treated as professional misconduct and asked the National Medical Commission and the Indian Psychiatric Society to take disciplinary action in each case reported.
In 2022, a queer rights activist Dr. Prakash Dandekar (a radiation oncologist and co-founder of Mumbai Seenagers), reported to the Indian Psychiatric Society the case of a psychiatrist from Maharashtra, who has a million followers on Youtube and is a practising proponent of ‘homosexuality needs treatment’ school of thought. The IPS asked its LGBT task force to enquire into it but according to a frustrated member of the enquiry committee, was ‘persuaded’ later by the seniors in the IPS not to take any action based on the specious argument that the videos on the Youtube were posted before the Madras High Court Judgement, totally ignoring the fact that those continued to run long after the said judgement was delivered and many say still do. What such protectionism by the IPS does is to nullify even some of the progressive steps taken by the society itself like supporting gay people’s rights to adopt children.
And it is no surprise that, as reported by Wire on 14th July 16, 2023. under the heading,
“Lesbian Couple’s Harrowing Journey Shines Light on Continuing Dangers of ‘Conversion Therapy’ (and that is what triggered this post), a lesbian girl was admitted and forcibly medicated at parents’ behest, at a psychiatric hospital in Kozhikode, Kerala to treat her sexual orientation! What medicine it could be is beyond me because there is no medicine to alter sexual orientation. Many times, when asked, the rationalization given is that, they were just trying to treat depression which many of queers have. Of course, many of them are depressed but that is just because of the societal and family pressures and listening to them sensitively and some medication occasionally, is all that is required. That does not need involuntary admission and forced injections. I tell them just do what you would do if a person with O-ve blood group comes to you with depression. You treat the Depression but you never try to change his blood group just to mainstream him, because a) It is normal even if uncommon and more importantly b) it cannot be done.
And Dr. Indira Sharma continues to hold responsible positions in Indian Psychiatry Society, year after year including, the Advisor to the Task force on Human Rights(of all the things) in 2022 !
It is high time for Indian Psychiatry to get its act together and ask its members to accept the scientific fact that all genders and sexualities are normal and that there is nothing here to treat!
Footnote from the editors:
- For more information, see query sent to IPS at https://new2.orinam.net/indira-sharma-homosexuality/ and response by Prof.T.V.Asokan, then President, at https://new2.orinam.net/indian-psychiatric-society-homosexual-not-mental-illness
- Also see open letter to Dr Dinesh Bhugra, World Psychiatric Society, in connection with Dr. Indira Sharma’s statements.
- Orinam’s letter to Dr Raju, then General Secretary, on his statement “the IPS… is working on finding out the majority opinion among psychiatrists regarding the classification and management of homosexuality.” is here.
