WATCH: Shock Therapy Used to 'Cure' Chinese Gays, U.K. Journalist Reports | Advocate.com

Electroshock therapy was once commonly administered to gay people in the U.S. in an attempt to “cure” them — and it’s still being used in some countries, including China, as documented in a report that aired tonight on U.K. television.

Shaunagh Connaire of Britain’s Channel 4 reported on the distressing situation in an episode of the foreign affairs series Unreported World.

Connaire went from a part of the world that is embracing LGBT equality to one where the situation of LGBT people “is somewhat darker,” she told Elle U.K. She saw “clinics that offer gay conversion therapy, sometimes even electroshock therapy, as a ‘cure’ for homosexuality,” she said. This practice continues even though the Chinese Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness in 2001.

John Shen (pictured above with Connaire), a leader of the Beijing LGBT Centre, and his colleagues are seeking to expose those clinics, but it’s dangerous work in a nation “whose intelligence simply cannot be outmaneuvered,” Connaire noted. Filming was difficult too.

WATCH: Shock Therapy Used to 'Cure' Chinese Gays, U.K. Journalist Reports | Advocate.com