To think a child wanting to transition should be dealt as a mental health matter?

Not just whistleblowers at the Tavistock, also people like Jamie Reed in the US

There were not high numbers of children killing themselves because they didn't transition. There is zero evidence to support this. 🙄

Sane people agree with you OP.

It's so sad to see the detransitioner stories emerging. Young people who were told that transitioning would solve their issues, finding that this was not the case. But having to live with the consequences of what they've done. Horrific.

Probably the same reason there's been a massive increase in autism and ADHD in the past decade.

It is now more recognised and more acceptable to talk about it. The same way gay people don't live in secrecy anymore so there appear to be more gay people than there 50 years ago.

A person with gender dysphoria now can talk about it and seek treatment rather than just living in silence and misery and then killing themselves, which is exactly what happens to people when you pretend their issues aren't real and don't let them talk about it or seek treatment.

I always find it interesting that detransitioners claim to be “rushed through the process” when it seems to be the exact opposite experience of the vast majority of trans individuals. Are they seeking treatment privately and paying for it? Because that would explain why clinicians are so keen to press on

I listened to a podcast interview with a detransitioner who talked about going along with transition because he thought he would lose access to his therapist if he didn’t. He was just gay, poor lad.

There have been whistleblowers about the failings at the Tavistock so clearly there are massive issues with diagnosis and then once diagnosed kids are pushed along by some clinicians. The young man I was listening to said he was told constantly “oh it’s ok to have doubts, thats normal but this will fix your problem”.

Gender dysphoria (I think there are valid questions over whether it’s a sexual/sexuality thing rather than an identity thing), is real but it’s also rare, the sheer numbers of children presenting as “trans” should have set off alarm bells instead of enthusiastic affirmations. I think in a few decades we will look back on this and people will rightly be appalled about how everything was handled.

If it were my DD I’d treat it like any other phase and if it didn’t resolve I’d be straight to a psychiatrist.

Personally, I don't think anybody should be allowed to physically transition. But maybe that is against a person's hunan rights. But certainly not children. There will be a host of claims soon by people who regret having surgery and/or taking drugs.

Really? Then how do you explain a 1400% increase in girls wishing to change sex, which has happened in space of about 10 years?

I dont know what you think the current process is but It is dealt with as a mental health matter? The entire diagnostic process is with psychologists. You’re not suggesting anything that isn’t the bare minimum standard for making a diagnosis of gender dysphoria before you even start discussing any medical interventions.

I accept that for a very small minority of people their dysphoria may be extreme and debilitating and last well into adulthood. For them maybe transition is neccessary. That is statistically extremely rare and I can't say what I would do if I were a parent in that (incredibly tough) situation.

I think maybe the majority of posters are sick of the forced pronouns and men invading female spaces, asp the fact that self identifying teens claim to need extra accomodatioms , when parents with actual disabled and SEN children are facing cuts to vital funding. I remember a thread on MN yonks ago when talking about sharing public conveniences and where are transmen or transwomen supposed to go? Someone had the gall to suggest they use the accessible toilets!!

It's good to be respectful and polite to people even if you disagree with their choices but there is no such thing as death caused because of misgendering or refusing a trans person access to a lavatory of their preferred choice.

it's not an identity or a protected characteristic either. It's just some people identify as the opposite gender to which they are born. Cross dressing has always been a thing trans is nothing new, and it used to be they got on with it and everything was fine.

People can identify as how they want as long as their personal preferences (they aren't needs for 99% of cases) don't impinge on the rights of other more vulnerable minorities. Fortunately the majority of transfolk are decent and respectable people but sadly they are also people whose voices of common sense are sadly drowned out by the more strident "lived experience" of these TRAs. I have no problem with transfolk. I have every issue with these rabble rousing victim types who like to LARP being women and gatecrash refuges and rape crises centres.

As for teenagers with actual GD? Most doctors advise watchful waiting. This is a good thing whatever the child eventually decides, as it's easy when we are young and unhappy to make impulsive decisions. And of course it's natural for parents to not be able to see their children suffer. I can't imagine how hard it must be for these families.

🙄Who cares what you think.Nobody. Parents know their kids best and move mountains finding out what is best for them when going though difficulties. The obsession some posters have with this subject and what other families are going though is frankly weird and yes in no way representative of real life. Bore off.

Yes I'd seek counselling for my child for body dysmorphia (which is what I think this is)

I still think it's so sad that people feel they need to change their healthy bodies drastically to feel happier. I definitely think there should be a lot more help in terms of support and counselling - at all ages.

I agree with you.

Here, no you’re not in the minority. Meanwhile, in the real world, yes.
Bur you knew that really didn’t you?!

This right here. Let's go back to the 1970s and children being "free to be you and me." Boys playing with dolls and women being what they want to be career wise.

YANBU. It's not a child's identity to be trans any more than someone covering their tv with tinfoil because the Russians are spying on them or that they are Julius Caesar are identities. It's not an anorexic's identity to be a fat person. Delusions shouldn't be colluded with albeit the person suffering from them needs compassion and kindness. Not enabling.

Part of the problem is that you no longer need to have gender dysphoria in order to be trans.

Transition is a word misused. You cannot ‘transition’ into the opposite sex.
Dozens? Unless you specifically work in this area then you should not know dozens of people with gender dysphoria, unless it’s a social contagion.

Mental health awareness and services have made the problem far worse IME.
A local autistic girl had years of identifying as different things alongside some very difficult MH issues. CAMHS offered zero support throughout despite suicide ideation and 1 attempt - all normal for autism apparently.

The day after she identified as a boy, aged 13, she had an emergency appointment, referral to GIDS, her parents felt pressured to go along with their daughter’s sudden trans identity (having had several intense transient identities over the previous years that CAMHS ignored). Two years later, thankfully no puberty blockers, and the girl predictably grew out of this phase, but the social transition added to her difficulties massively. It was not in any way helpful to her or her mental health, yet this was the only option of support that was offered to them.

What needs to happen is what happened in the years running up to the mid 2010s when all this madness took off.
“Mummy I think I’m a boy”
“Well you’re not, let’s go out and play football in the park”

Those who persist (iirc it’s around 10% of cases) refer for specialist help. If they choose to transition they can do so as adults with full facts available to them, rather than the current cherry-picked rose tinted spectacles approach that teaches little children that boys can choose to be girls and vice versa, and that anyone who questions it hates them and wants them to die. That right there is the problem.

Interesting discussion. I read the Cass review when it was published and it seemed well written and very reasonable.
One thing that really resonated with me was when Dr Cass pointed out that there isn't a female or male brain which is something I have always thought so I was glad to see it has scientific support. So no-one can really say they have the wrong brain for their body.

Echobelly: an under 18 wants medical intervention, puberty blockers are a good solution that buys time.

Good grief! Puberty blockers do not buy time! They are tantamount to child abuse.

I would assume my child had been indoctrinated online or at school if he announced he was a girl. Hopefully by the time he does go to school we will have moved away from the fictional concept of human beings changing sex.

Well I'm glad that there is a TRA who is NOT advocating for child transition.

Whilst children should not be put on puberty blockers post Cass there are unscrupulous people who are making them available online.

And certainly in the USA children younger than 12 have had body parts removed.

One day the world will look back in horror at this medical scandal.

Until children stop being fed these lies by adults who should know better the best thing to do is to seek out mental health support, first ensuring that the person who use for help isn't also going to indocrinate your child further.

One day this insanity WILL end.

Here is Dr Cass' final report - stating there is not enough evidence!

cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/The-Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Bookmarked.pdf

here are some links regarding bone density:

Bone Health in the Transgender Population
Published online 2019 Jul 2.

Micol S. Rothman and Sean J. Iwamoto

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6709704/

This

Also unknown are the long-term effects of puberty blockade, the effect of changes in body composition and the optimal type, timing, dosage, and route of administration of GAHT for bone outcomes.

Conclusion
The results of the studies that reported impact on the critical outcomes of gender dysphoria and mental health (depression, anger and anxiety), and the important outcomes of body image and psychosocial impact (global and psychosocial functioning), in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria are of very low certainty using modified GRADE. They suggest little change with GnRH analogues from baseline to follow-up.

And

GnRH analogues are frequently employed to provide puberty blockade in adolescents with gender incongruence or gender dysphoria. From their use in other medical conditions such as prostate cancer, their deleterious effects on the bone are well known, although these have the potential to be reversible if treatments are stopped or add back therapies can be given

And

However, Z-scores in the trans boys also showed an expected drop during GnRHa treatment. Similarly, they did not fully make up their bone loss as Z-scores at age 22 were still lower than baseline

Meaning, the authors acknowledge little is known about the lasting effects of puberty blockers. In this study, they propose some positive effect from cross sex hormones for females but ths results show that it doesn’t really make up the loss from puberty blockers.

PLUS

Just adding this piece about bone density for young transitioners here:

https://segm.org/the_effect_of_puberty_blockers_on_the_accrual_of_bone_mass

1st May 2021

Dr Michael Biggs (an advisor to SEGM) has been calling for the release of data from the Tavistock’s experiment since 2019. A subset of the data were finally released following the judicial review into puberty suppression at the Tavistock clinic. Biggs’ reanalysis has just been published in the Journal of Paediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism. It finds that after two years on GnRHa, the Z-scores for a significant minority of the children had declined to a level that should trigger clinical concern.

PLUS

A documentary on the Dutch Protocol which has been heavily criticised as creating treatments that were actually not found to improve life's outcomes for children and adolescents as people had been previously led to believe

There are currently almost 3,000 young people on the waiting list for gender care in the Netherlands. They are vulnerable adolescents who are frequently subjected to discrimination. Many of them suffer severe mental distress. Doctors at the gender clinic in Amsterdam are pioneers in care for transgender young people. The treatment developed here years ago is now used worldwide. Now, criticism is growing. International experts are questioning the scientific evidence put forward by the clinicians in Amsterdam. Zembla investigates the Dutch transgender protocol.

What this covers is that no gender clinic has been able to replicate the results of the Dutch paper. One patient of the group died due to the surgery complications of gender surgery and even de Vries questioned why no one seemed interested in that patient while accepting the study. Dr Riittakerttu Kaltiala (Professor of Pschyiatry, Tampere and who set up gender clinics) and Mikael Landen (Professor of Pscyhiatry, Gotenberg) and Dr Angela Samfjord (Head of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Gotenberg ) all are interviewed about the quality of the study behind the protocol and its flaws that became apparent later. Ie. The 55 patients is so small and de Vries acknowledges that they are not really similar to todays cohort of adolescent transitioners. That only 32 filled in the survey with positive results. The others were not chased up and one died.

Gerard van Breukelen, a professor of Methodology at Maastricht university goes on record to say that the methodology of that initial study was weak. There was no control group so the conclusions should not have been considered as strong as the gender clinicians claimed. Other academics declined to be interviewed due to fear for their employment as it is such a contentious issue. When talking to de Vries, she mentions that many more studies have been done by other countries now. And the doco makers mention that all those studies de Vries refer to have stated that the evidence is low quality. A Swedish team led by Landen was asked to do a full review by the Swedish government and he confirms that the evidence was just not there. Hence the Swedish government withdrew treatment.

The mention the Cass review and discussion ‘locking in’ of identities contradicts the ‘time to think’ narrative. They interview three transitioners. One detransitionered before surgery and one is happy with transition but not with the process the team followed. The one who detransitioned was put on hormones despite not even socially transitioning as he felt wearing a dress was ‘a man wearing a dress’. But was put on hormones but didn’t go through surgery after all. It also wraps up with Lucy who was stuck on the waiting list and who believes that if she was given PBs, she would not have ended up transitioning. She has obviously detransitioned now after double mastectomy and testosterone, then ovaries and uterus removal.

And this documentary discusses this below.

The newly released peer reviewed reanalysis of the UK study. McPherson & Freedman both worked on the initial analysis of the patient clinical data.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2023.2281986

Psychological Outcomes of 12–15-Year-Olds with Gender Dysphoria Receiving Pubertal Suppression in the UK: Assessing Reliable and Clinically Significant Change

Susan McPherson & David E. P. Freedman

Published online: 29 Nov 2023

Abstract

The evidence base for psychological benefits of GnRHA for adolescents with gender dysphoria (GD) was deemed “low quality” by the UK National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. Limitations identified include inattention to clinical importance of findings. This secondary analysis of UK clinical study data uses Reliable and Clinically Significant Change approaches to address this gap. The original uncontrolled study collected data within a specialist GD service. Participants were 44 12–15-year-olds with GD. Puberty was suppressed using “triptorelin”; participants were followed-up for 36 months. Secondary analysis used data from parent-report Child Behavior Checklists and Youth Self-Report forms. Reliable change results: 15–34% of participants reliably deteriorated depending on the subscale, time point and parent versus child report. Clinically significant change results: 27–58% were in the borderline (subclinical) or clinical range at baseline (depending on subscale and parent or child report). Rates of clinically significant change ranged from 0 to 35%, decreasing over time toward zero on both self-report and parent-report. The approach offers an established complementary method to analyze individual level change and to examine who might benefit or otherwise from treatment in a field where research designs have been challenged by lack of control groups and low sample sizes.