Is the trans kids trend over? Aibu to wonder what happened to the kids caught up in it in the 2010s?

Respectfully, I don't think a severe mental illness can be a trend. It is like saying 'howling on all fours in Tesco' is a trend, no?

I think the way the mental health issues manifest is a trend.

If dozens of teenagers started to howl on all fours in Tesco they would be both a bloody nuisance and part of a trend. Whether they would also be manifesting mental health issues would be open to debate.

No.

Yeah the kids I went to school with felt the same way about homosexuality.

In my late 30s now and still gay.

Maybe the trans people OP knew are steering clear of her now that they’re older and have the option to hang out with who they want?

That sounds like an example of something called mass psychogenic illness, like the Tanganyika laughter epidemic. Distinctly involves a (short term) trend.

There was a sudden surge of kids in your school 30 years ago all claiming to be gay and demanding people speak about them in a certain way and give them extra access rights, and then that started to drop off?

I don’t think so.

There's definitely a social contagion element. I don't see how anyone can think otherwise when you saw almost whole friend groups of girls at school suddenly identifying as a different gender - male or non-binary. Surely they can't all have suddenly started experiencing massive gender dysphoria or whatever.

DD still knows a lot of trans people at uni. But she is involved in quite an arty/theatre type crowd so that may be a factor. (My niece graduated in art a few years ago and at least half the people on the course had some kind of different gender identity, according to the booklet with all their bios in it for their final
degree show.)

It depends.

The cohort of kids who were anorexic moved to being trans. There was a decrease in anorexia. It's now being recognised that many with anorexia are probably autistic.

So what we could be seeing is a social contagion where symptoms of struggling to cope have shifted.

We know that anorexia is associated with social contagion in people who are already vulnerable. No one argued with this. Why are we arguing with this 'because trans'.

Social contagion

Anorexia, self-harm cutting, Tourettes, fainting - all genuine conditions that have been the focus of social contagion clusters. Possibly the Victorian 'green disease' as well, although there's little consensus on what that actually was.

Something can absolutely be both a real mental health condition and a trend.

There are also trends that present as what we would now probably call mental health conditions when looked at superficially, but actually have little or no medical basis - the recent multiple personality craze, the dancing frenzies of the middle ages, the mass witch trials.

I forget whether it was Miss Beale or Miss Buss who, in her first school assembly as headmistress of her school, announced firmly that no girl in her school was hereafter going to faint in assembly.

Such was the power of her mind, or something, that thenceforth no girl did.

It's worth reading up on culture-bound phenomena if you're interested in this sort of thing. Loads of fascinating examples from all around the world of either social contagion or of the same real underlying conditions being understood - and therefore presenting symptomatically - in very different ways.

Whether that's penis-stealing witches or PTSD¹, all cultures have them.

¹ There is no doubt that intense stress and trauma can affect the brain. That's been shown by changes visible on brain scans. And that these brain changes can affect behaviour. But how those behavioural changes manifest vary over time, even within a single culture. The symptoms of shell shock from WWI are quite different from those of the combat fatigue of WWII or the PTSD of the Gulf war. That's not to say that people are faking it, but cultural expectations of what's 'supposed' to happen do change what people experience, and how those around them perceive and interpret their actions and experiences.

The angelic visions and voices of one era become the little grey men of another.

And isn't it interesting that at a time when the countryside was probably more thoroughly kept under surveillance from the air than any other, during WWII (it couldn't have been done much before then, because, well, no aircraft to speak of), to ensure no covert messaging to the enemy was going on, not a single example of a crop circle was recorded, even though claims are made about them having been around since mediaeval times?

There are lots of different schools round here, including some of the most sought after grammars in the country. And it's the schools with lots of middle class white girls that are most affected.

Little bit different, but I remember reading decades ago about an experiment that showed people doing some specific drug for the first time only experienced the effects in the expected ways if they were with a seasoned user.
Might be complete nonsense, mind, but it amused me at the time.

There are also very high rates of transition among girls who are or have in care, and I think in other less favourable circumstances - absolutely LOADS in Blackpool, apparently.
I suspect the poorer kids are trying to escape from what they've seen of girls'/women's lives (and who can blame them, really) while the rich kids are trying to be interesting, or get attention, or find a way not to be seen just as the rich kids.

This, absolutely this.

That sounds quite fascinating! I might read up on it.

I don't know how well known it was in the UK, but the 'moving statue' phenomenon in Ireland in the 80s was unbelievable. I was a kid at the time and remember it. It's only when I look back now I see how bonkers the whole thing was. It was mostly teenagers and it was everywhere, they absolutely believed they had witnessed a religious miracle. While bopping along to Wham and Prince.. it's the collision of two cultures that is so hard to fathom.

It was the Summer of 1986 specifically

Not over for us or the many other parents we have contact with through support groups (from all over the world)

Not sure trend is the right word but... yeah I don't know...

I remember the moving statues phenomenon in Ireland. It wasn’t mostly teenagers, it was all sorts of fools, my aunt included. I think the statues sometimes cried too. We went to see one and saw no movement but my aunt was looking at the same thing and said it moved.

I vaguely remember that.

You might enjoy this book, which Is the one that first introduced me to the concept: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Paranormal-Paul-Chambers/dp/0713727632/ref=mpsa11?

And I'll see if I can find the recent article I read with modern Western ones, showing that viewing it as being something that only arises from 'weird foreign/ancient superstitions' is an arrogant assumption - we are not immune to the irrational.

It might have been part of the same lot of research which showed that the half of a sample who were given distilled water or a chalk pill or something equally inert rather than the drug being tested for also experienced the effects in the expected ways if they were with a seasoned user. This led to the phrase "contact high" to explain the phenomenon, I seem to recall.

I tested this myself in the early seventies, by accident: a lot of my guests got very drunk on the fruit punch I made at one party and failed to put any alcohol into while claiming it contained vodka because I thought I'd added the booze.

Expectations are a wonderful thing.

And there is a book about this sort of stuff from 1841, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds

Not to be confused with Douglas Murray's 2019 The Madness of Crowds.