NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Roddy Biggs was 13 and depressed, and had been seeing a therapist for six months before he revealed something he had denied even to himself: He was gay.
It took time because he hadn’t fully acknowledged his sexuality, but also because he had to trust the therapist, he said.
“Because I didn’t want to be gay myself, so I didn’t even open up to myself until then,” said Biggs, now a 23-year-old college student in Knoxville, Tennessee. It would have been devastating, he said, if the therapist had turned him away and told him to find another counselor.
“I would have felt defeated, and I would have probably actually killed myself,” Biggs said.
While it isn’t unusual for a teen like Biggs to need time before trusting a therapist enough to talk about his sexuality, some mental health professionals say, it illustrates the potential minefields ahead as Tennessee implements an unprecedented new law allowing counselors to refuse to treat people based on religious reasons or personal principles.