China's Gay Shock Therapy

Overview

Reporter Shaunagh Connaire and director Patrick Wells visit China to reveal how some hospitals use treatments including nausea-inducing drugs and electric shock therapy to 'cure' gay people. Secret filming shows one young volunteer receiving painful electric shock treatment, while LGBT activists campaigning for gay rights are closely monitored by the police. It's nearly 15 years since the Chinese Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness, but across the country hospitals are still offering various treatments to 'cure' gay people. LGBT activists tell Unreported World that in a country where having children is seen as the most important thing a person can do for their parents, it's mostly those parents who take their gay sons and daughters into the conversion clinics, sometimes telling them that unless they go they will not support their education.