BENGALURU: When gay teenager Charlie Spring becomes institutionalised for an eating disorder in the Netflix series, Heartstopper, he is met with all the empathy and kindness that therapy is expected to be. As he recovers, he’s also able to have open conversations about his relationship with his therapist, free from judgment about his sexuality.
For queer Bengalureans, however, finding mental healthcare that is accepting of their identities remains a gamble. When 20-year-old non-binary college student, Harlton Lejo, tried therapy last year, they avoided questions about sexuality and gender until it was unavoidable. Soon after they came out to their therapist, the latter stopped all contact with them.
“Coming out to her seemed forced and I didn’t get to do it at my own pace. I thought of her as a trustworthy person whom I could tell everything; but when it came to this aspect, she left me in the blue. It made me push down my queerness further to the point that I didn’t want to be associated with it,” says Lejo.
Their identity being judged, dismissed, revealed to their families without consent and being pushed into conversion therapy (a pseudoscientific practice that claims to ‘cure’ queerness) are common fears that queer people have around seeking mental healthcare. Lack of training is to blame for prejudice and the continued existence of conversion therapy, says Mani Agarwal, a city-based queer affirmative therapist.
“There’s no adequate training given to practitioners who don’t have the lived experience. When I say I am a queer identifying practitioner, the client already knows that I understand what they mean when they say they are part of the community.
People without the training or lived experience may superimpose their preconceived notions and morals which we call therapy malpractices. There’s also not been a strong stance from the system saying conversion therapy as a whole is banned,” says Agarwal.
After negative experiences with therapists, many LGBTQ+ people have started exclusively looking for queer-affirmative therapists. Sneha Nair, a 21-year-old professional, was in high school when she reached out to a psychologist for anxiety and depression and mentioned that she was bisexual.
“She insisted that I’m not really bisexual and I shouldn’t be thinking about sexuality at all even though I’d already been in a relationship at that point.”
Years later, she reached out to a queer affirmative therapist after hearing about it on social media. “The previous experience made me doubt everything; I was like, ‘Is it really okay if I’m bisexual?’ But she actually listened to me and reaffirmed that it’s my body and my mind, giving me confidence to determine my own identity.”
A long road ahead
Queer affirmative therapists are trained to have an in-depth understanding of social realities and go through a process of recognising and unlearning their own prejudices. “Queer affirmative therapy is a lens that we apply to people’s lives knowing that there is something outside of the norm that’s happening, and we have to criticise the norm and not the person. It looks at understanding what intersectionality of social contexts exist, and how vulnerable they are,” says Agarwal.
Before queer affirmative therapy became a label to look for in therapists’ bios, there was a list of ‘safe’ mental health professionals created and circulated by the community as well as support groups by LGBTQ+ NGOs, recalls Rohini Malur, a 39-year-old queer woman. Despite being in therapy for depression 10 years ago and having largely positive experiences, community support was healing in ways that therapy couldn’t.
“When you go to a Good As You (support group) meeting, all the people in the room are queer, so that particular loneliness of being the only queer person in a space disappears. It also became a reason for me to get out of the house. Every week, I would get up and I would get up and go meet them. It was sometimes the only time I got out of bed in the week.” she says.
Malur says there’s a long way to go but the situation has improved in the last decade. She adds, “Back in 2010, everyone who was sharing a story was talking about difficulties coming out, talking to their parents or being out in the public eye. I still hear conversations about coming out but I’m also meeting people who have never been in the closet and never needed a support group, I never heard that back then.”
Seeking Support
Groups and Helplines
Good As You
When: Thursdays; 7pm to 9pm
Where: DM @swabhava on Instagram. Online option available
Details: @goodasyou.blr on Instagram. Registrations mandatory
Naz Foundation Helpline
Call: 8800329176
When: Monday to Friday; 10am to 4pm
Details: www.nazindia.org
All Sorts of Queer
A support group exclusively for queer people, excluding cisgender men.
Details: www.asqbangalore.com