Keep sexuality private

CONTROVERSIAL plans for GPS and hospitals to ask all patients about their sexual orientation come into force this April.

Many doctors have described these plans as intrusive and insulting, and i completely agree. it’s another example of insidious state invasion into our private lives.

But most importantly, it also risks alienating patients and encouraging them to give false information.

i was treating a young female Muslim patient transferred from another service. her previous therapist had asked about her sexuality and, put on the spot, she had said she was straight. She was actually gay, and her problems stemmed from this and her deeply homophobic upbringing.

But she spent the next six months in therapy never saying what was really the problem. She told me only after i’d been seeing her for months and she felt she could trust me.

These sorts of plans are cooked up by a metropolitan elite who cannot get it into their heads that outside of central london not everyone is waving a rainbow flag.

And asking people if they are straight or gay before they volunteer that information themselves will damage the doctor-patient relationship.