Conversion "therapy" is a dangerous and discredited practice that wrongly assumes that a person's gender and sexual identity is a mental illness if it does not match pre-defined majority "norms"; and that a mental illness can be addressed via harmful practices such as rejection, shame, and psychological abuse. These practices have been proven to lead, not to changed gender or sexual identity, but to decreased self-esteem, depression, substance abuse, and even suicide.

Mental health professionals who recommend conversion therapy are wrongly taking advantage of their perceived position of authority to push their own moral agenda on their patients and those patients' parents, causing irreparable harm. Such behavior is wrong, and these professionals should not be permitted to practice in Virginia.

Please, don't allow one more young person to be targeted and hurt by these dangerous and discredited practices.