Hector Pereira
Caracas, Sep 14 (EFE).- “Homosexuality is not cured.” A sentence that is almost commonplace and that resonates strongly these days in Venezuela, following the country’s psychologists condemned the so-called “conversion therapies” with which a few continue to “torture” LGBTI people in the South American nation.
With an unprecedented pronouncement, the Federation of Psychologists of Venezuela (FPV) has made clear its rejection of the offer and implementation of “misnamed conversion therapies”, recalling that these are procedures that violate human rights and that “They just bring more physical and emotional suffering to people.”
The declaration has been celebrated by organizations and activists who defend Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transsexuals and Intersexuals (LGBTI), a group that suffers various forms of discrimination.
According to FPV estimates, one in four people who attend psychological consultations is openly LGBTI, many of them with problems of personal acceptance and their environments, so therapies must be safe spaces for patients to advance in their self determination.
NOTHING TO CURE
Sexual orientation “is not a disease and therefore cannot be treated as a disease,” recalls, in an interview with Efe, the president of the FPV, Clara Astorga, who applies the same principle to all sexual and gender diversity, aspects -he explains- that they are marked by the discovery of each person.
That said, the psychologist insists on reminding Venezuelan society that LGBTI people, like other citizens, have the right to self-determination of their lives, and the population “has a duty to respect” this guarantee, especially the authorities and who work in the areas of physical and mental health.
This precept, he continues, is not fulfilled as long as false psychologists persist who, intrusively, offer fraudulent therapeutic services that seek to correct something natural such as homosexuality or transsexuality and that, in pursuit of this, subject people to torture that is prohibited by law. United Nations.
For this reason, as well as for the recent statements by politicians on television channels once morest LGBTI people and for complaints received in the FPV that reported intruders applying these false therapies, the Federation closed ranks and categorically rejected this fact, while called on the population to denounce these practices.
Astorga stresses that the complaints received in his office do not include any licensed psychologist but rather false therapists, some of whom were arrested in recent months by the security forces, thanks to a joint effort between the federation and the authorities.
“The Venezuelan union in general has a very high level and has a very high understanding,” celebrates the psychologist who sees in the FPV statement a contribution to psychoeducation and, especially, to people “who feel hopeless” by believing, erroneously, who have a disease.
A PROFIT
The clear and firm position of psychologists “is a gain” for the LGBTI community, or so Daniel Picado, director of the organization País Plural, which promotes the rights of this population and works on several fronts to reduce discrimination, considers it.
“There are LGBTIQ+ people who, because of these conversion therapies, because of discrimination, suffer from mental health disorders such as stress, anxiety, depression, and even suicidal ideation,” the activist who sees in the FPV “one more ally”.
He insists that there is “structural discrimination” once morest LGBTI people, who are “misunderstood in all spaces”, but also “invisible and unprotected”, so he hopes that, as a result of the union statement, “health professionals do not lend themselves to carrying out” these “tortures”.
And, continues Picado, since torture is a crime that does not prescribe, human rights organizations and the FPV are called to receive complaints from all the people who were subjected to these procedures, sometimes with electric shocks to inhibit natural instincts, to seek justice.
“I believe that the State should react to this statement understanding that conversion therapies are happening, that religious groups truly carry out these practices in the dark ages, that they do happen and that it is important then that action be taken once morest it,” Add. EFE
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