Trans teenagers in China face abuse at home and bullying at school, with almost one in five forced into conversion therapies, according to a survey released on Friday. The researchers called for the widely discredited therapy – be it hypnosis or electric shocks – to be outlawed, saying transgender youths in China face a “hostile” environment. “There are still hospitals and clinics that have conversion therapy for sexual minorities,” said Runsen Chen, lead author of the study. “It should be banned in the future, in China,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. The online survey questioned 385 people aged from 12 to 18 who are transgender or do not identify as male or female. It was conducted by the Beijing LGBT Center between January and September 2017 and analyzed by researchers at Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University in March of this year. It found that 17% of respondents had been coerced or forced to undergo conversion therapy, 45% were at risk of major depressive disorder and 51% experienced suicidal thoughts.