MUMBAI: A transgender teen from Delhi was in a relationship with a boy for three years. Each time the relationship soured, he would attempt suicide. Now, he is 19 and has tried to kill himself three times. He almost succeeded in his last attempt and had to be hooked to a ventilator. But his mom is still struggling to accept that her son is gay. "She keeps telling my doctor that I want my only son to settle down with a girl and have children," says the teen.
His mother's reaction is not the exception but the norm. And according to mental health professionals, the Supreme Court verdict is only going to make the problem worse. Clinical psychologist Pulkit Sharma, who is treating the teen, says that most parents "entertain a hope that sexual orientation can be changed" and the verdict will reinforce the idea that homosexuality is an aberration.
"Parents will come to us saying, 'Doctor you are not above the SC,'" worries Sandeep Vohra, consulting psychiatrist at Apollo Hospital in Delhi.
In addition, counseling a homosexual to come out of the closet may put the patient at risk. "Earlier, I would say, 'It is absolutely normal and now our law also acknowledges it and people can have an open, healthy life,'" says Sharma. Now patients will ask, "How can we do this? It is illegal."
Besides denying a section of society their fundamental rights, the SC order may also encourage unethical practices like hormonal therapy (prescribing testosterone), electroshock therapy, aversion therapy and orgasmic reconditioning therapy. While aversion therapy works on the principle of associating same-sex fantasies with stabs of pain from a pin prick or small electric current, orgasmic reconditioning associates heterosexual thoughts with reaching an orgasm.
Such therapies work for a "short time", says Gurvinder Kalra, a psychiatrist in Melbourne. Before moving to Australia, Kalra worked in Mumbai's Sion and MGM Hospitals where he often came across patients who got married after being "treated". "They would make their wives sit outside and start crying in front of me," says Kalra. These patients often suffered from chronic depression.
Last year, Kalra came across a gay school teacher, who was prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs by two psychiatrists from a well-known Thane hospital, who guaranteed a cure. "All these medications have the side effect of reducing one's sexual desire," explained Kalra. But the patient's "attraction wasn't affected. He was still getting the heebie-jeebies in his heart when he was looking at a good looking man." Kalra condemns such treatments as being gay "is not a disease ".
After the Delhi HC order, Kalra saw a 25-30% jump in people coming out of the closet. "There is a general co-relationship between legality, illegality and naturality, unnaturality," he says. Though mental health professionals will need to be more circumspect while counselling patients to be openly gay, there is a loophole. "The judgment makes gay sexual relationships illegal but not homosexuality illegal," says Kalra. "The man is not having sex in front of you to be arrested."
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