A cure for wellness

In that time, Russian courts have found over 100 individuals guilty of involvement in the “LGBT movement” or displaying queer symbols, such as the rainbow flag, while dozens of others have been prosecuted for their queer identity, whether real or merely suspected.

In 2021, almost a quarter of Russians (23%) still considered members of the LGBT community “sick people who need medical treatment”, according to the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Centre. In today’s Russia, the state equates the threat from LGBT people to that from paedophiles and extremists, dressing up its persecution of queer people as its concern for morality and the protection of children.

What’s perhaps less known is that Russia now has a whole network of “rehabilitation centres” and “psychological workshops” offering to “correct homosexuality” and “cure transgenderism”. Those unfortunate enough to be sent to such institutions by their families are often kept in isolation, forced to undergo “spiritual rehabilitation” and take medication, undergo hypnosis and even be subjected to violence, with human rights activists having recorded instances of both torture and abuse.

State media, politicians and propagandists have long portrayed LGBT people as deviants who undermine society and regularly compare queer people to paedophiles and other “perverts” who need to be either cured or isolated.

Moreover, homosexuality is often described as a weapon being used against Russia by the West, or as the deputy speaker of Russia’s State Duma, Pyotr Tolstoy, put it: “If we consider LGBT propaganda a tool of hybrid warfare, and no one doubts that anymore, then it poses a danger both to our children and society as a whole.”

When Vladimir Putin instructed the Health Ministry to create a special psychiatric institute to study the behaviour of people “with impaired gender self-identification” in 2023, LGBT people and human rights activists sounded the alarm and warned that Russia could return the thoroughly discredited practice of so-called conversion therapy — violent practices designed to “correct” human sexuality.

Daddy issues

Nadya Mityagina, an English teacher and content-creator, is a lesbian from the city of Syktyvkar in Russia’s northern Komi republic. Nadya dated boys in her school years, but as that brought her little joy, was increasingly worried there was something wrong with her. 

After one painful romantic experience saw Nadya succumb to depression and begin playing truant from school, her mother suggested she see a therapist. The psychologist who treated her decided to “correct” her sexuality.

Having taken the psychologist into her confidence, Nadya admitted that she was attracted to women, at which point the therapist informed her that same-sex attraction was “unnatural, came from trauma, and could be treated”. The psychologist then suggested that Nadya’s feelings were due to unresolved issues with her father and tried to convince her that her sexual identity was a lie and a defensive reaction, which could be “corrected”.

The treatment consisted of pseudo-scientific practices and emotional blackmail, with Nadya repeatedly being told that “becoming LGBT” would condemn her to a life of unhappiness, loneliness and childlessness. 

Looking back, Nadya admits that as fear was her overriding emotion — the very idea of having feelings for another girl was terrifying — she didn’t even consider the possibility that the therapist could be a quack or the fact that lesbians in many cases did have children. Living in a homophobic environment with no resources for LGBT people didn’t make things any easier, of course. 

“She would divide the palm of her hand into four sections and say: ‘Imagine something delicious, like tiramisu. This is tiramisu [pointing at one quarter of her hand]. This is lemon. This is dog vomit. And this is milk.’ Then she added “kissing women” and placed it with dog vomit. I was meant to imagine eating dog vomit and kissing a woman. Very many times. It was supposed to evoke disgust. It didn’t work. But I spent a lot of time on it.” 

“I was 15 when the first law banning LGBT propaganda was passed,” Nadya continues. “There was a lot of talk about it on TV. I trusted the state — if serious men in suits said it was bad, then there must have been something to it. The most important thing was that I felt ashamed to the point that I couldn’t even think about it.”

Nadya’s thinking changed, however. At 21, she began trying to accept herself. “I calmed down, realised that I was all right,” she says of coming out to herself. But past experience had made its mark and she found herself thinking “we are doing something wrong” for the first year of what was a happy new relationship with a woman. 

The road to recovery was long and painful. She relied on therapy, the support of loved ones and an inner desire to be happy. She says it still affects her perception of herself and her ability to be open with others.

“I was very ashamed. It’s impossible to hate one part of yourself and love the rest. Or be ashamed of one part of yourself, and show off the rest,” Nadya concludes.

Now she understands only too well that the “specialist” was promoting an anti-scientific lie. After the beginning of the war in Ukraine, she left for Argentina with her future wife. She is now happily married and posts about her queer life. 

A year and a half in hell

Only in the last three years has 30-year-old Igor* been able to live a normal life, enjoy his job, be understood by his friends and feel good about himself. Though he understood his alienation from his body from an early age, he found it hard to come to terms with his identity as a trans man, as he grew up knowing nothing about trans people. When he was finally issued with a male ID aged 27, he was immediately disowned by his family. 

Though Igor tried to get into university, his debilitating gender dysphoria and his family’s lack of compassion saw him slip into a deep depression. “I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror or bear to hear my own voice. It was very bad,” he says. 

Having dropped out of school, lost friends who refused to understand his struggle, and even attempted suicide, Igor ended up at a “rehabilitation centre”, which his mother described to him as “a house in the countryside where they treat depression”.

And so began the nightmare that Igor still finds difficult to talk about. “It was no house in the country. It was just people making money, calling themselves a rehab centre for drug users,” he explains, adding that he knew as soon as he arrived that the sanatorium was nothing of the sort. It turned out to be a strictly run institution with disproportionate punishment meted out for breaking any of its rules. When he refused to sign a consent form upon his arrival, he was warned that he wouldn’t “leave alive” unless he did. He therefore reluctantly “consented” to stay.

Though the centre claimed to use the same 12-step system as Alcoholics Anonymous, in reality, its methods were far more brutal, and included humiliation, unbearable psychological torture and a strict system of punishment. Everything felt especially absurd to Igor as they tried to treat him for an addiction he wasn’t suffering from. “I felt like an alien, because I don’t drink anything stronger than coffee,” he says of the group sessions.

Igor found the worst ordeal being forced to write down his innermost thoughts and feelings, allegedly for therapeutic purposes, which were then read by the staff. If the centre’s employees found the words “insincere” or “insufficiently repentant”, they meted out punishment. 

“They could give you more written assignments — to get something even more intimate out of you,” says Igor, adding that they were obliged to report the slightest misconduct of their fellow patients, no matter how insignificant.

Families seeking ways to “correct” their queer children at any cost are typically found through a semi-closed network of personal recommendations and word of mouth. Igor subsequently learned that his mother had been visited by a scout from the centre who had heard that she was looking for an alternative way to “cure” her son.

“As far as I know, it might have cost anywhere from 60,000 rubles (€660) to 100,000 rubles (€1,100) per month. Sometimes it’s even more,” Igor says.

During his enforced stay at the centre, all communication with the outside world was strictly monitored and he was only allowed to make two short phone calls a week, to which staff at the centre would listen in. In one call, Igor was shocked to hear his mother tell him that he was lucky, saying she had been advised to place her son in a psychiatric hospital and forget about him, adding that he should be grateful she hadn’t done so. 

One of the most painful aspects of the experience for Igor was his mother’s betrayal, and he says he still hasn’t fully understood why she insisted on sending him there. “I’ve asked her but got no clear answer. But the staff at that wonderful institution told me that she wanted her daughter back.”

After a year and a half of “treatment”, Igor emerged from the centre exhausted, confused and weighing 30kg less than he had when he went in. However, he refused to be broken by the experience. “I looked like a concentration camp survivor. I look at photos from back then and yes, I smile, because I’m alive, at least, but it was a nightmare, of course.”

Though it took Igor a long time to recover from the trauma, he is at least sure that he will never allow anyone to lock him up under any pretext ever again. He ultimately completed his trans journey alone, finally having the documents he requires, a body he is comfortable in, and a supportive environment.

Treatment or torture?

Igor’s story is far from unique. A 2024 investigation carried out by Sistema, the investigative branch of US-funded Radio Liberty, reveals that there are at least 12 organisations within Russia offering “treatment for homosexuality”. Staff from the Initiative for the Prohibition of Conversion Therapy in Russia told Novaya Gazeta Europe that they had approximately 16 other such organisations in their current list, which, they said, did not include the results of monitoring by other human rights projects such as Memorial. The number of such “hospitals” in the country is likely to exceed 30.

The institutions usually advertise themselves as offering solutions to alcohol and drugs problems, though the centres contacted by Novaya confirmed that they could also “fix” LGBT people, most of whom are placed in such centres against their will by their own families. Their methods include religious sermons, isolating clients from society, the forcible medication of patients, prayer, hypnosis and punitive psychiatric procedures. 

The World Psychiatric Association calls attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity unethical, while the UN equates some types of forced “homosexuality treatment” with torture. In Russia, however, such methods are de facto encouraged by the state, which not only avoids public criticism of such institutions, but also refuses to take up the cases of those who have been illegally locked up in these hell holes. 

*name changed