When a child comes home with questions about who they are—who they’re drawn to, how they see themselves—a parent’s first instinct is to protect them. That protective urge can lead some moms and dads straight toward programs that promise to change their child. Before taking that step, Conversion Truth for Families says, parents owe it to themselves and their kids to understand what those programs actually do.
Conversion Truth for Families is a resource organization built specifically for faith-guided parents. It defines conversion therapy as any effort to alter a person’s attractions or sense of self through counseling, prayer programs, or residential treatment centers. The practice goes by softer names too—”reparative therapy,” “change efforts,” and, more recently, “exploratory psychotherapy.” That last label, Conversion Truth for Families notes, is simply a repackaging of the same harmful approach, designed to catch parents during moments of fear and confusion.
The evidence against these practices is not a matter of opinion. Research published in JAMA Psychiatry found that people who experienced conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide over their lifetime compared to those who sought other forms of care. For children younger than ten when the therapy took place, that risk was four times higher. Dr. Jack Turban of Harvard Medical School, who led that study, described it as the first to link these change efforts to serious mental health consequences definitively.
The Trevor Project’s peer-reviewed research adds to this picture: youth who went through conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report a suicide attempt, and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple attempts in the past year. Data from the U.S. Transgender Survey, analyzed by ScienceDirect, found that conversion therapy exposure raised suicide attempt risk by 17 percentage points—a 55% increase—and more than doubled the likelihood of a young person running away from home.
Every major medical and mental health organization in the United States has rejected these practices. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association are united on this. The American Medical Association has stated plainly that these programs do not change who a person fundamentally is. A UK government evidence review reached the same conclusion: conversion therapy is unlikely to work and is tied to negative health outcomes.
The cost is not only emotional. Research published in JAMA Pediatrics found that conversion therapy costs U.S. families roughly $650 million each year in direct spending, with the downstream harms—substance abuse, suicide attempts, and related outcomes—pushing the total economic burden to an estimated $9.23 billion annually. Families like Paulette Trimmer’s paid for program after program and came out with a broken relationship with their son. Adam Trimmer eventually walked away from conversion therapy on his own and has spent years working to repair what those programs damaged.
Conversion Truth for Families offers a free resource called the Christian Family Companion—a four-part guide developed with input from parents, grandparents, and guardians who have already walked this path. It gives day-by-day guidance covering the first 24 hours through the first year, emotional regulation tools, realistic expectations for each stage, and strategies that honor faith without weaponizing it against a child.
Research from the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University found that young people who received parental acceptance—not agreement, but acceptance—were eight times less likely to attempt suicide, nearly six times less likely to report high levels of depression, and significantly less likely to experience homelessness or substance abuse compared to those who faced high family rejection.
As one mother put it after her family’s painful experience: “We thought we were choosing faith. But faith would have chosen love.” Conversion Truth for Families exists to help parents find that love before it’s too late.
