Conversion therapy is costing the United States billions of dollars every year

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When an LGBTQ person is subjected to so-called “conversion therapy,” society pays a steep price. All told, the impacts of the widely discredited practice are estimated to cost the United States $9.23 billion annually.

According to a first-of-its-kind study published in JAMA Pediatrics, efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity create direct costs and, as well, indirect costs associated with anxiety, severe psychological distress, depression, alcohol or substance abuse, suicide attempts, and fatalities.

Related link: Conversion therapy practice forced to pay $3.5 million after losing appeal in historic lawsuit

“Conversion therapy causes the kind of lingering lifelong harm that we wind up spending billions of dollars in order to address and health,” Casey Pick, senior fellow for advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, told Bloomberg. “While we’re trying to put a financial cost on conversion therapy, there is so much that is incalculable that can only be understood by listening to the stories of survivors, to see the true human cost in addition to the additional financial cost.”

The review of 28 published studies showed that LGBTQ people who participated in sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts were more likely to…

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