Moving Beyond a Systematic Review of Sexual Reorientation Therapy (Commentary) (Viewpoint Essay‪)‬

A recently published article in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMF7) may be of interest to social work practitioners. The article, "A Systematic Review of the Research Base on Sexual Reorientation Therapies" (Serovich et al., 2008), raises some serious concerns that are relevant to social work clinicians and educators and have recently been debated in the pages of Social Work (Hodge, 2007; Melendez & LaSala, 2006). The JMFT article is a systematic review of 28 empirical research studies examining the topic of sexual reorientation therapy. The article provides an introductory description of sexual reorientation therapy, a brief review of the literature, and then a review of the literature in terms of methodology, results, and ethical issues. The authors conclude that "scientific rigor in these studies is lacking" (Serovich et al., 2008, p. 235) and that "if sexual reorientation therapies are to be fully accepted and embraced as valid, two other important issues need to be addressed" (p. 236). The two issues spoken of are (1) the reversibility of reorientation therapy and (2) the validity of such an intervention when there is no strong empirical data suggesting its effectiveness.