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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Transgender treatment and NHS

27 replies

FlightyEmu · 07/02/2020 19:04

This is something that I’ve been wondering about for a while. We hear about both children and adults getting puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and indeed gender-changing surgery on the NHS. But on what grounds does the NHS fund this? I can’t work it out.

We’re repeatedly told that being transgender isn’t a mental illness. And yet the only [supposedly] negative consequences of not ‘transitioning’ seem to be depression and anxiety - which are symptoms of mental illness. There is zero physical health risk to not transitioning, absolutely zero, because it’s not a physical illness. But transitioning actually causes physical issues.

So if gender dysphoria is not a mental illness, nor a physical one, isn’t treatment effectively cosmetic?

On what grounds is the NHS justifying any treatment other than psychological treatment to help with the concurrent depression and anxiety?

OP posts:
JellySlice · 07/02/2020 19:12

I don't know. But menopause is not an illness, either, yet I get HRT. HRT prevents many problems which could ultimately cost the NHS and society a lot more. I expect that the cost of HRT is vastly less than the cost of fixing osteoporotic broken hips. If there's there a parallel, I struggle to find one.

StealthPolarBear · 07/02/2020 19:07

God question actually. It sounds as though its preventative.
I wonder what the people who have had this surgery have been diagnosed with. Can't be gender gysphoria.

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