China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, which oversees hospitals, did not respond to a request for comment. Letters sent to the NHFPC and the Chinese Society of Psychiatry by HRW also did not receive a response.

Debunked treatments

The APA describes the idea gay people alter their sexuality as "rejected by all the major mental health professions," and it warns conversion therapies have "serious potential to harm young people because they present the view that the sexual orientation of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth is a mental illness or disorder."

Homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, and in 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

Family pressure

For its latest report, HRW spoke to men and women from across China, but the practices they described were largely uniform -- forced medication, hypnotherapy, and electroshock treatment.

In the latter practice, patients were strapped to chairs or beds and wired up to machines, they were then shown gay porn or told to think of personal sexual experiences while they were shocked, with the idea being they would associate the pain and discomfort with homosexual arousal.

Those interviewed by HRW described being pressured by their parents and families, with some even saying they were forced into conversion therapy and held against their will.

"My dad kneeled down in front of me, crying, begging me to go," one man told HRW. "My dad said he did not know how to continue living in this world and facing other family members if people found out I was gay."

Once they were in therapy, interviewees said they were often prevented from leaving and subjected to treatments -- such as electroshock -- without knowing in advance what would happen to them.

No legal protections

Unsurprisingly, the therapies, which lack any scientific evidence to back them up, did not work.

"Individuals were released, either because the family could no longer afford the expenses, or because the doctors at the psychiatric hospitals gave up for complete lack of 'intended effect' of conversion therapy," the report said.

That's not to say that the people subjected to these practices were unaffected, however.

Interviewees described to HRW side effects such as depression, as well as psychological trauma from the abuse they received from staff and the constant framing of homosexuality as unhealthy and abnormal.

According to HRW, the majority of interviewees were treated at public hospitals or government-licensed clinics.

However, the report said despite the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, and the successful legal cases against conversion therapy, at present guidelines for treatment do not ban or limit the practice.

"Against the backdrop in which there are no laws or regulations to protect individuals from discrimination due to sexual orientation, in which there are no proscribed professional guidelines on relevant psychiatric practice, in which families are willing to pay large sums to 'cure' an individual from homosexuality, an abusive practice has persisted," the report said.

The group recommended the NHFPC "issue regulations or guidelines that clearly prohibit public hospitals and private clinics from conducting conversion therapy" and strengthen the monitoring of hospitals to stamp out the practice.