Stonewall's response to Transgender Trend

Thank you @DoubleTweenQueen and apols OP, didn't mean to kill your thread, I just feel it's important for anyone with thoughts of suicide to be linked to someone who is trained to assess suicide risk, rather than just signposted somewhere for help with specific issues. Both are required and regardless of my own views on gender identity, I think that is a key element that's missing from Stonewall's response when they are raising issues around suicide.

@ReliablyMum Thankyou for delurking. Useful insight.

Very interesting thread. Having formerly worked in suicide intervention, many years ago, I'm delurking to say absolutely, stats on suicide can be helpful in forming broadscale prevention strategies from a policy point of view, of course they can. For example, gun control laws can limit the number of suicides by shooting. But not everyone chooses to use a gun. There are other ways and means.

A key part of my training was to understand how important it was not to be guided too much by group stats, as it can lead to assumptions that some may be experiencing suicidal feelings when they are not, and that we may miss others who are not in identified groups that are.

It's rightly been said on several threads, that reasons for suicidal thinking are different for each and every person. For some it may be one life event or experience, for others it may be lots of accumulative things. It's what each event means to someone, and that is entirely individual. We do know that feelings of loss are commonly related to suicide. Making links between specific experiences and likelihood of suicide is unhelpful in the moment, as is telling someone how they should be feeling. What helps most is people feeling able to talk about their suicidal feelings, with someone they can trust, in a non-judgemental way. Ideally someone who is trained to identify indicators of suicidal thinking through behaviours exhibited and able to offer that kind of support. This is where resources to tackle suicide should be focussed IMHO and a lot of work has taken place around this in recent years.

Basically our own thoughts, feelings and opinions on what may trigger suicidal thoughts are largely irrelevant when trying to help someone choose life. It's about listening to people's feelings about suicide itself that is important and can make all the difference. Support for issues around what has led them there is also important, but I feel a distinction does need to be made.

Rushing to "fix" issues is often a natural thing for people who care about someone to want to do, but for someone experiencing suicidal thoughts, being presented with instant solutions, without having their suicidal feelings listened to or acknowledged, can leave a person with those feelings, since they are left feeling not understood. Not sure really where I’m going with this but wanted to get that off my chest! It’s fair to say though, that this is where I have concerns about the current narrative about links to suicide and what might appear to be quick fix solutions.

@Tanith Yes, it’s a very sad fact that young people are under a myriad of stresses which can lead to poor MH, and have always been.

GI is an additional and unhelpful complication and focus on top of this.

GD could easily be a manifestation of poor mental health, or reduced mental resilience, due to co-morbidities and other factors - an indicator of poor MH, and not the cause it is being championed as.

I went to a girls school many years ago, when the internet was not available and Gay Rights were raging.

In my class, three girls under 15 attempted suicide.
One had recently lost her mother; the other two had been sexually abused and raped.

If only there was the same concern over the widespread abuse of girls that there is over gender identity!

@sacredfeminina You've put it far better than I could! It's just not rational.
Particularly when gender identity is being taught in schools, and from the earliest ages, and how neuroplastic and suggestible are young brains.
Then social media, peer pressure and social contagion. It's a tsunami of influence - all refuted of course. ROGD is a figment of 'GC bigots'.
Then you consider the 'anti- conversion therapy' bills being brought in country after country, which effectively remove potential safety valves and affirmation the only acceptable route, plus the push for medical intervention at an earlier age, and the usurping of parental rights.

The movement pushes in one direction only, and it's not a thoughtful, holistic, evidence-based course.

Ok let me just accept the idea that gender dysphoric children who believe they are 'transgender' are more likely to commit suicide...

What shall we do?

Ok, ok we'll use a preferred pro-noun. Will that be enough? ... They will be happy for a short while, then what is their next demand? Name change? Ok, we'll do it. Anything to make them happy. But they are not happy now they are a 'he', and their name is now John not Joanna. Now they feel even more at odds with their body.

So they take hormones...
So they cut their breasts off...
They have a hysterectomy...
So they de- skin their forearm and get it shaped to a penis like blob on the front of their body...

At what point are they supposed to be happy??

Now they are permenantly unhealthy, they will need life-long medication and support. They are infertile. They cannot have sex. They cannot orgasm. They not actually male, but so not appear female, an outsider for the rest of their lives. There are no known long term effects off all this messing with their (once healthy) bodies.

If Stonewall and Mermaids truly believe that there is such a high rate or suicide.... WHY ON EARTH are they not funding and pushing for more therapuetic, holistic solutions that help these children love the ONLY body they are born with.

It seems stonewall and mermaids are using the suicide rate to push children down the medical pathway mentioned above.

It's very, very strange.

Where is the funding coming from?

--------

Posters on here that are pushing for the belief of a high suicide rate amongst 'trans' kids... What is YOUR suggested solution? The medical slippery slope mentioned above?

@OldCrone Thanks.

www.transgendertrend.com/stonewall-school-report-what-does-suicide-rate-mean/

Anyone - from the SW comments, does anyone have a link to where this comes from?: "more than two in five trans pupils have attempted to take their own life”?

Thanks.

@suggestionsplease1 Makes zero difference to me where you are or when you reply, if at all.
You are not answering to the complexity of the wider issue.
I wouldn’t get on to vaccines, if I were you. It’s in my field.

It wouldn’t be surprising if GD is a big risk factor, similar to other prevalent risk factors in child and adolescent development, but it’s defining best clinical practice to support these particular young people that is the key, rather than attempting to manipulate the fact to validate the demand for faster affirming intervention. That’s not rational.

Yes, exactly.

@DoubleTweenQueen

You may have the day off work but I don't! So forgive me if I can't go into the detail that you might hope for.

'Thwarted belongness' which you refer to in point 2 - I imagine this would relate to the extent to which the young person feels accepted and recognised in their stated gender ID.

'Environmental stressors' and 'destigmatization of noncisgender identities' again these issues likely relate to the degree of acceptance felt by a person in their identity, so for eg. not being welcome in the toilet matching your gender ID, refusal of parents / teachers to acknowledge your gender ID, operating in a culture where trans /non-binary IDs are frowned upon.

Abstracts will provide you with a good summary of research, but yes, to examine in detail you will need to access the full texts, can't help you there, sorry.

It's good to examine research thoroughly, but it's also important to bear in mind over-arching themes that are developing out of research.

Take studies into Covid, for example. There will be many, many studies out there that showing the effectiveness of vaccines. But some of them will have problems with them, others may say unusual things that go against the main body of evidence, others will indeed highlight issues that need to be examined further. But taken as a whole what is the overall picture? How do you choose to process that information?

There are of course people who choose to ignore the main body of information and evidence and focus solely on those less well-thought of studies telling them what they want to hear, because it justifies their preconceptions, biases and behaviours and allows them refuge from cognitive dissonance.

I think it's important to consider the evidence as a whole; there is not a study out there that can not be nit-picked away by someone so minded.

If they are at increased risk, how does this compare to other children/adolescents who are LGB and/or have been diagnosed with mental health problems?

Agree that seeing this research would be helpful. So far what I can see is that LGBT people are possibly at higher risk as a population. The trans cohort ideally needs to be disaggregated. Mental health issues are one of the number one antecedents of suicide. Many children who identify as having gender incongruence also have mental health issues.

Surely it's a good thing if there are not large numbers of gender dysphoric or gender-questioning children completing or attempting suicide or feeling suicidal ideation? Why are some people so determined to argue otherwise?

(Rhetorical question; I know why.)

If you've got 95 good studies out of 100

I very much doubt, in my personal experience of TRA endorsed "research", that there are 95 methodologically good studies in this area, or they would be used occasionally, rather than the shite they generally produce as evidence for their agenda.

And I would be focussed more on under 25s, at presentation, collated from smaller age-ranges within that group.

@OldCrone Yes, good point.
I would also like to see social media surveys - or far better, clinical data - following cohorts through taking medical history, presentation, diagnosis, hormone treatment, surgery, follow-up at regular time intervals up to at least 5yrs to see what level of self-harm, suicide ideation, suicide attempts there are at each stage of the process - including all outcomes, including de-transition.

The equivalent pathway from diagnosis through psychological support alone, if possible, including desistance.

4. Interesting - data trawling; findings based on 15 citations. 2016 publication, revising estimates for TG youth at 0.17-1.3% - how does that compare to current figures? And numbers going down the affirmation and medicalised pathway? Is there any cause for concern here? Discuss.

everyone please do post all the links to research you have which supports the views you hold.

I haven't done any research in this area, so I don't have any research to post links to.

What do you mean by 'the views you hold'? I'm trying to understand more about this, including answers to the following questions:

Are children and adolescents who identify as transgender and/or who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria at increased risk of suicidal behaviour? I'd like to see any evidence which indicates whether or not they are.

If they are at increased risk, how does this compare to other children/adolescents who are LGB and/or have been diagnosed with mental health problems?

What is the underlying cause of the increased risk of suicidality in children and adolescents who have gender dysphoria? Obviously we know suicidal behaviour is complex and unlikely to be due to one single cause, but what I'm looking for here is some research which looks at all the issues leading to this behaviour, some of which could be those which we know to be correlated to transgender identification in children and adolescents, such as internalised homophobia and being victims of sexual abuse.

Do any of your references cover that? There's a lot to wade through in your list just to find it's not covered at all. I assume you would also be interested in an answer to this last question, as obviously what we all want is to reduce incidence of suicidal behaviour, so identifying the underlying causes would be a useful step in this direction.

I'd actually find it easier if you posted your references in a proper citation format rather than just a link. Seeing the author name(s), title and date would help people to see instantly whether a reference might be relevant or not. Also many of your links just go to an abstract and then those of us without access via a university have to search on google scholar for a full text link anyway, as we would with a proper citation.

[quote suggestionsplease1]@OldCrone have a read through some of these perhaps. O and everyone please do post all the links to research you have which supports the views you hold.

guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/suli.2007.37.5.527

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19359705.2016.1207581

www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/lgbt.2019.0338

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X1630146X

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0886260520915554

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0890856717303167

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1867-2

psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-52280-009

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X16303585

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X14006934

publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/145/2/e20191725/68259/Pubertal-Suppression-for-Transgender-Youth-and

www.publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-split/142/4/e20174218/76767/Transgender-Adolescent-Suicide-Behavior

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609516000801

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X1930922X

www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/lgbt.2017.0259

ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19010080

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032718317920[/quote]
Did you read and evaluate any of these?

Citation:

1. Based on 55 ’transgender youth’ - no information as to whether any are diagnosed GD, or on any treatment regimen. Abstract alone mentions factors of suicidal ideation related to transgender identity, their own esteem in body image and also how others perceive them physically, weight - ooh, any parallels with ED? 'Physical and verbal abuse’ - no detail. Sexual minority status is cited as key risk factor, however - just going on the abstract.

2. Suicide ideation higher in females. Also higher in F & M who feel ‘different gender’ to F & M. "Perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness were significantly related to suicidal ideation and/or suicide attempts. Experiences of painful, provocative, and harmful events and acquired capability significantly predicted suicide attempts” - what would you suggest is an holistic approach to supporting these troubled young people?

3. Superficial (mine) quote: Consistent with minority stress theory, this systematic review demonstrates that identification as TGD is associated with increased environmental stressors, highlighting the importance of considering both individual and contextual factors in the development of mental health interventions for TGD youth. Given the significance of findings related to the association between both depression and gender-based victimization and suicidal behavior, it is critical to advocate for the destigmatization of noncisgender identities through policy-level change. - I don’t see a recommendation of affirmation and medicalisation. I see a multifactorial issue for which one-size does not necessarily fit all and that mental health interventions are required. Is that not conversion therapy though? :O

Surveys: m.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

Researchers are of course looking at the long term picture - I think some of the links I posted refer to research in this area, but of course it is an ongoing process. There is no present reason to believe, as far as I am aware - again please post the (robust, well-designed) research saying otherwise, that agreeing to use preferred pronouns and name causes any harm whatsoever in later life.

You're incorrect to say that the research focuses just on gender identity; on the contrary it is very well known and researched that other factors come into play, mental health, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, family support, childhood trauma, education level, income, and there are many studies that analyse these factors alongside gender identity using study designs that allow them to determine the influence of gender identity on completed suicides/ suicide attempts/ suicide ideation within a very complex overall picture.

To my mind, the best approach is to reflect on the overall body of evidence, and the direction it points to for enabling the best possible mental health and wellbeing for people who are trans-identified.

If you've got 95 good studies out of 100 pointing in one direction (and studies carried out all over the world, by hundreds of different organisations and researchers), then why would you want to ignore that evidence?