Banning

SB 74- Introduced by Senator Charleta Tavares Pending in Senate Health and Human Services Committee

The Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social • Nationally, there has averaged one trans-youth Workers asks you to protect our minors by supporting suicide every week of 2015 proposed Senate Bill 74, which would ban the discredited and dangerous practice of “conversion Such efforts may encourage family rejection therapy”, sometimes referred to as “reparative and undermine self-esteem, connectedness and caring, therapy,” or “ex-gay therapy.” The neutral term utilized important protective factors against suicidal ideation by mental health professionals is “sexual orientation and attempts. 3 Young people who experience high change efforts” (often abbreviated SOCE), eliminating levels of family rejection face serious health risks, the notion that harmful reparative or conversion including being 8.4 times likely to report having practices are a form of therapy. attempted suicide, 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression, 3.4 times more likely to use illegal Outdated conversion therapy practices also apply to drugs, and 3.4 times more likely to report having gender identity change efforts, causing severe harm to engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse. 4 our vulnerable youth. A recent onslaught of youth suicide in Ohio has brought this conversation to Please help protect the youth of Ohio from national spotlight. One of these , these damaging and discredited practices by Leelah Alcorn, cited this harmful therapy as reason in supporting SB 74. her suicide note in December of 2014. Professional mental health organizations that There is no evidence that sexual orientation can be have publically supported anti-conversion altered through therapy, and that attempts to do so therapy regulations include: may be harmful. Indeed, there is no medically valid American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy basis for attempting to prevent homosexuality, which is American Counseling Association not an illness American Psychoanalytic Association National Association of School Psychologists • LGB youth are 4 times more likely to attempt State chapters of the American Psychological Association suicide as their straight peers State chapters of Mental Health America • Questioning youth are 3 times more likely to National Association of Social Workers attempt suicide as their straight peers. 1 • Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought and taking their lives

• 25% of transgender youth report having made a suicide attempt. 2

1 2011 CDC, “Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health-Risk Gender Discordance in Children and Adolescent s, 51 J. Am. Acad. Child & Behaviors Among Students in Grades 9-12” Adolescent Psychiatry 957 (2012), available at 2 Arnold H. Grossman & Anthony R. D’Augelli, Transgender Youth and Life- http://www.guideline.gov/content.aspx?id=38417#Section420 Threatening Behaviors, 37(5) SUICIDE LIFE THREAT BEHAV.527 (2007) 4 Caitlin Ryan et al., “Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health 3 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Practice Parameter Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults,”123 on Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual Sexual Orientation, Gender Nonconformity, and PEDIATRICS 346 (2009).