The UK Gets It: Their National Health Service Tightens Controls Over Transgender Treatment
Numbers of transgender surgeries are on the rise in the US as Biden promotes them; sign a Declaration to challenge harmful transgender standards for treatment in the US
Most children who think they’re transgender are just going through a ‘phase,’ says NHS
Doctors told not to encourage young people to change their names and pronouns
Hayley Dixon, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 23 October 2022
Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.
NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.
The services, which will replace the controversial Tavistock clinic, will be led by medical doctors rather than therapists and will consider the impact of other conditions such as autism and mental health issues.
The plans, which are currently under public consultation, are for an interim service for young people with gender dysphoria whilst Dr Hilary Cass continues her review into the treatment offered by the NHS.
They note that there is a need to change the services because there is currently “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making”.
NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.
Parent groups and professionals have long raised concerns that NHS medics have taken an “affirmative” approach to treating children, including using their preferred names and pronouns.
The proposals say that the new clinical approach will for younger children “reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” and doctors should be mindful this might be a “transient phase”.
Instead of encouraging transition, medics should take “a watchful approach” to see how a young person’s conditions develop, the plans state.
When a prepubescent child has already socially transitioned, “the clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist”.
For adolescents, social transition will only be considered when it is necessary for preventing “clinically significant distress” and when a young person “is able to fully comprehend the implications of affirming a social transition”, says NHS England.
It adds that before medics change a young person's name and pronouns, a teenager should have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
The public consultation documents say that change is necessary against a backdrop of a sharp rise in referrals to the gender identity service, from just under 250 in 2011-12 to over 5,000 last year.
In recent years there has also been a spike, with “the number of referrals currently at 8.7 per 100,000 population per year in 2021-22 compared to four per 100,000 in 2020-21 and 4.5 per 100,000 in 2019-20”.
Read the rest here.
“WPATH Has Discredited Itself”
Dr. Joseph Burgo, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, author, and blogger at Psychology Today. From his bio:
His blog, AfterPsychotherapy, draws more than 25,000 visits per months. A regular writer and commentator for news outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and NPR, Joe is also the voice behind the Psychology Today blog “Shame.”
Joe provides face-to-face video psychotherapy through a secure online platform to clients in Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as throughout North America. He has practiced psychotherapy for more than 30 years, holding licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical psychologist.
He earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA and his masters and doctorate degrees from California Graduate institute in Los Angeles. He has taught at the graduate level and served as a board member, officer and instructor at an affiliate of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
Dr. Burgo, with whom I’ve recently become acquainted through a mutual friend, is leading an effort to challenge the newest edition of the “Standard of Care” by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Reading and adding your name to his well-crafted Declaration is worth your time. A snippet:
The Standards specifically promote the affirmative care model, continuing to endorse widespread medical treatments (drugs and surgery) for trans-identified youth despite rising scientific skepticism that has led Sweden, Finland, France, and the United Kingdom to retreat from that approach.
WPATH endorses early medicalization as fundamental while these other countries now promote psychosocial support as the first line of treatment, delaying drugs and surgery until the age of majority is reached in all but the most exceptional cases.
In a correction issued soon after its release, nearly all lower age limits for suggested medical and surgical interventions were removed – an abdication of responsibility for basic child-safeguarding norms.
Read and sign the declaration here. It is long past time to stop people and the politicians behind them who promote and facilitate minor children's senseless and permanent mutilation.
Study: Gender Transgender Surgeries on Minors Accelerates
Joshua Arnold, The Washington Stand (via the Daily Signal)
Over 1,100 adolescents underwent gender transition surgery from 2016 through 2019, according to a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics, the journal of the American Medical Association. No less shocking than the cumulative total is the accelerating rate from year to year.
Using data from the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample, researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine estimated that approximately 100 gender transition surgeries were performed on adolescents in 2016, over 200 in 2017, over 300 in 2018, and a whopping 489 in 2019.
That represents a nearly fivefold increase over a span of four years. Ages ranged from 12 to 17, with 16 as the median. Altogether, researchers estimated the total number of gender transition surgeries performed on minors from 2016 through 2019 to be 1,130.
The researchers noticed that the surgeries overwhelmingly (98.6%) targeted teenage girls. “Nearly all were masculinizing, with only 1.4% feminizing.” The statistic seems to confirm the title of Abigail Shrier’s book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”
Although much smaller than the estimated figure of adolescents who identify as transgender (a breathtaking 300,000), the estimated number of gender transition surgeries among minors is higher than previously reported.
Earlier this month, international wire service Reuters commissioned a study of health insurance claims that found 238 “top” surgeries (double mastectomies) on minors in 2019, and a total of 832 gender transition surgeries on minors from 2019-2021.
Most of that difference is likely due to the dataset used. The Vanderbilt study used the ambulatory surgery sample, while the Reuters-commissioned study used data on insurance claims. However, not every gender transition surgery was paid for insurance—hence the difference.
Speaking of insurance, the Vanderbilt study put numbers to that, too. It found that 61.1% of the gender transition surgeries on minors were covered by private health insurance, while 16.5% were covered by public health insurance, and 15.8% were self-paid (with 6.6% remaining unspecified).
Read the rest here. This is serious business.
And don’t forget to sign the Declaration.