Can "conversion therapy" make someone straight?

The trouble starts with the word treatment. Orientation is not an illness, so there is nothing to “cure” — and the interventions dressed up as correction (aversion techniques, electric shocks, medication, “pray it away,” shame-based counseling) don’t work. What they reliably produce is harm: significantly elevated depression, anxiety and suicide risk.

The medical world has been clear since 1990

• The World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases in 1990; China’s own diagnostic standard, CCMD-3, followed in 2001. Not a disease means nothing to cure.
• The American Psychological Association’s 2009 review of decades of “sexual orientation change efforts” concluded there is no rigorous evidence of change — and there is evidence of harm.
• The World Psychiatric Association put it plainly in 2016: “There is no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed.”

China’s courts have already ruled — twice

Chinese courts have already ruled on this — twice, notably:

1. 2014, Beijing (Haidian District Court): a counseling clinic advertising “gay conversion treatment” was found to have engaged in false advertising and ordered to compensate and apologize. The ruling stated that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and that “correction” has no scientific basis.
2. 2017, Zhumadian, Henan: a gay man was committed to a psychiatric hospital by relatives and held for 19 days of “treatment”; the court ordered the hospital to publicly apologize and pay damages.

In other words: in mainland China, an institution claiming to “cure” homosexuality is already operating on the edge of false advertising and unlawful detention.

If someone is pushing you toward “correction”

• There is nothing about you that needs fixing. When you’re in pain, what deserves treatment is the pressure and the stigma — not your orientation.
• When choosing a counselor, check whether they take an affirmative stance. We keep a red-flag checklist for finding LGBTQ+-friendly counselors.
• If family members are pressuring or threatening to send you somewhere for “treatment,” put your physical safety first, and see the support directory.