A PACE resolution being voted on this week that includes counselling aimed at aligning a person’s “gender identity” with their sex under the umbrella of ‘conversion practices’ is “yet another attempt from trans activists to push in an unnecessary ban that will cause a good deal more harm than good,” according to a prominent psychotherapist.
Executive Director of Genspect, Stella O’Malley warned that the resolution “collapses very different practices into a single moral category” and treats “conventional psychotherapy as if it were inherently coercive”.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution – ‘For a ban on conversion practices – is to be voted on Thursday, January 29, calls on member states of the Council of Europe to introduce bans with criminal sanctions on so-called “conversion practices”.
The draft resolution defines conversion practices, also known as ‘conversion therapies’, as “all measures or efforts aimed at changing, repressing, or suppressing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, based on the false belief that such core aspects of a person’s identity are pathological or undesirable or somehow able to change”.
It further states that conversion practices aimed at promoting heterosexuality or “aligning a person’s gender identity with their sex assigned at birth”, include “psychological or behavioural counselling”; spiritual and/or religious rituals; “aversion methods”; and “verbal abuse, coercion, isolation, forced medication, electric shocks, physical and sexual abuse”.
The resolution expresses the assembly’s concern that conversion practices “persist” across the 46 Council of Europe member states, and consequently calls on countries to introduce legislation at a national level to “prohibit conversion practices, providing for criminal sanctions”.
Speaking to Gript, Ms O’Malley said that she was very concerned about “yet another attempt from trans-activists to push in an unnecessary ban that will cause a good deal more harm than good”.
“This proposed ban exposes a fundamental lack of understanding of the practice of psychotherapy. It risks criminalising conventional clinical work that is typically exploratory, cautious, and responsive to uncertainty.
“Once therapy itself is framed as suspect, clinicians become defensive and unwilling to work in this field and young people ultimately lose access to care that prioritises psychological understanding over premature medicalisation,” she said.
Ms O’Malley said that the resolution’s understanding of conversion practices is “not accurate”, and that it “relies on an ideological definition of conversion practices rather than a clinical one”.
“It assumes that any therapeutic work which does not affirm a stated identity goal is coercive by default,” she said.
“For young people with gender dysphoria, this is particularly harmful. It discourages careful assessment, exploration of comorbidities, differential diagnosis, and therapeutic neutrality, all of which are foundational to ethical mental health care. A blanket ban replaces clinical judgment with political compliance.”
The PACE resolution would be improved by “promoting evidence-based, developmentally informed and conventional mental health care that protects therapeutic neutrality and informed consent,” Ms O’Malley said.
The standardisation of titles such as counsellors and psychotherapists, Ms O’Malley said, would help to ensure that the professionals working in relevant fields were qualified and credentialed.
“It would include clear distinctions between abusive practices and legitimate psychotherapy, safeguards for exploratory therapy, and investment in long-term outcome research,” she said, adding that “protecting children from harm requires better standards, not broader prohibitions”.
While PACE resolutions are not legally binding, they often provide guidance for national legislatures, leading opponents of the resolution across Europe to recommend that the Assembly refrain from adopting it.
The Athena Forum, a European initiative working to “safeguard and advance sex-based rights across law, policy and civil society”, described the resolution as calling for “criminal sanctions, national legislation, monitoring mechanisms and coordination with civil society organisations to enforce this framework”.
Commenting on the potential ramifications if the resolution is passed, Ms O’Malley said that member states could seek to “transpose the resolution into national law or professional guidance in ways that go beyond its original scope”.
“This could include regulatory pressure on clinicians, complaints mechanisms based on ideological rather than clinical criteria, and a chilling effect on therapists working with gender-distressed young people.
“The result would not be increased protection, but reduced clinical efficacy and a narrowing of acceptable therapeutic practice across Europe, particularly for children,” she said.