Now in her 70s, she was surprised to learn that her story had been written up without her permission by the psychologists as a ‘successful’ case of treatment. Finding the needle in the haystackīy chance, I was chatting with an friend and colleague about the research and discovered that she knew a woman who’d experienced aversion therapy. When she put us in touch, it turned out that this was one of the women who had received the ‘therapy’ at North Manchester. We were intrigued by these cases, but were unable to access NMGH records, so had no way of finding out what happened to the women involved, or how many other women went through this procedure. Some women had definitely been subjected to this treatment, as two examples of young women were anonymously recorded in a research paper as ‘successfully’ treated. The hospital had been given an anonymous donation on the condition that the money was used to treat homosexuality. We knew from the psychiatric literature that a form of aversion therapy was administered by psychologists at the North Manchester General Hospital (NMGH) in the mid-1960s. While there has been a growth in ‘hidden from history’-type research (often called archival activism), there is still little knowledge about what happened to LGBTQI people, especially women, who ended up in the psychiatric system. However, there is much less known about how they overlap. There is substantial and growing interest in LGBT history and, to a much lesser extent, psychiatric survivor history. But, we asked, what happened to women? Although female homosexuality wasn’t criminalised, unlike male homosexuality, it was still classified as a mental disorder (‘sexual deviation’) that could be medically treated. For gay men, aversion therapy involved being given emetic drugs and receiving electric shocks while they viewed naked images of men. Our vision is for everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics, to be able to live safe, happy and healthy lives where they can be themselves without fear of discrimination.Sarah Carr and I first met several years ago at a mental health conference when she presented a powerful account of her experiences of being a gay woman and a psychiatric survivor.Īfterwards, we spoke about a colleague’s research into gay men’s experiences of receiving aversion therapy to ‘treat’ their sexuality. This ‘LGBT Action Plan’ explains how we will advance the rights of LGBT people both at home and abroad, and improve the way that public services work for them. The Government is committed to taking bold action on the results of the survey. We have now published the results from the national LGBT survey in the form of a research report and a summary report, and we hope that the findings will be a valuable resource, not only for government, but also for everyone working to support LGBT people. This response was unprecedented, and it was a significant undertaking to analyse the results. The survey received more than 108,000 responses, making it the largest national survey of its kind anywhere in the world. We asked questions about education, healthcare, personal safety and employment. It asked questions about people’s experiences of living in the UK and in accessing public services. The survey was open to anyone who identified as having a minority sexual orientation, gender identity or had variations in sex characteristics. In July 2017, the Government launched a national survey of LGBT people.