Trans teen ends their life after not receiving gender affirming care

Yes. Heartbreaking story, badly misrepresented in the headline. Poor child.

This. IME young anorexic women hate the way their bodies naturally develop — curves, breasts. So wanting to be a boy goes hand in hand with the anorexia for some women. When anorexia has a hold there comes a point where the brain is so affected by lack of nutrition that therapy is useless. I have an acquaintance who has only recently managed to pull herself back from the brink and start eating enough to enable her to receive help from psychologists.

Incorrect. Those links show self-reports of suicidal ideation - not completed suicide - in adults - not children - who filled in a questionnaire. It’s a self-selecting group of people who completed it and the authors are activists.

It is wrong to speculate on the single trigger for suicide. Completed suicide in children in Australia is rare and suicide reports and coroners reports show no evidence of it being due to gender, or lack of medical care.

In contrast, in the UK Michael Biggs looked at suicide across decades of the patients attending or waiting to attend the Tavistock and found it to be rare.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35043256/

The article in the OP is from an episode of Four Corners on ABC TV in Australia. Here’s a link to it. I don’t know if you can watch it outside of Australia or not. You should be able to. You’ll need to create an ABC iView account to view it.
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2303H024S00

Here's an ABC article about the episode:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-10/transgender-children-westmead-hospital-research-four-corners/102568570

An investigation will now take place into the delivery of gender affirming healthcare in New South Wales:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-11/nsw-gender-affirmation-care-investigation-review/102585936

I'd be interested to know what affirming care means in this situation and how it would have effectively ended all risk in a child with anorexia and dysphoria. Are we talking social transition? Hormones? Surgery?

It doesn't sound like it got as far as the child or family having got as far as discussing the practicalities of what "gender-affirming care" might even look like in Noah's case - it sounds like the message Noah seemed to be receiving from the medical professionals who were available to help was that "there is apparently this magic solution to your distress, but we don't know what it is it how it is decided and so we can't provide it to your ourselves".

I should imagine the fact that none of the medical professionals involved could support Noah to relieve the gender distress without applying psychological principles that might be deemed conversion therapy meant that Noah felt that the one solution they needed was completely out of reach until they reached the top of the "gender specialist" waiting list.

There’s implication in the article that the anorexia was secondary to the dysphoria. It says the child started to starve to stave off puberty. I wonder whether that is true or if it just fits the narrative better.

But who the fuck is telling these children to do these things? That’s not a normal progression anyone would work out for themselves. Sometimes I hate the internet and the negative effect it’s having on unstable teens.

And of course, if this stupid, affirmative pathway with its damaging puberty blockers and irreversible treatment at a young age wasn’t available, children wouldn’t be damaging themselves trying to attain it.

Surely you can't give massive hormone doses and serious surgery to a body ravaged by anorexia. Could a body that underweight even take the anaesthetic?

And poor Noah’s legacy will not be as a child with a complicated health history whose needs weren’t met, but as a trans child martyr, killed by bigotry.

No doubt there will be vigils and candles, but the truth remains that this was a deeply troubled and confused child whose sad death was the result of their overall mental health, not their gender.

@Helleofabore Victoria has introduced legislation so that not being gender affirming is regarded as conversion therapy.

I would also expect that a specialist in anorexia would know about the interactions with gender dysphoria. As that specialist has not commented (nor do I ever suspect they will), it seems likely the specialist indicated that the most pressing issue was the anorexia and dealing with it as the child had been hospitalised twice for this.

Perhaps a stupid question, but would it even be advisable to initiate medical transition with anorexic patients? Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones put the body under strain so how could this be done safely with somebody who is severely underweight?

Very irresponsible to suggest the outcome would have been any different had the child been given cross sex hormones and a double mastectomy.

I say that instead of the frilly “gender affirming care” for a reason.

Anorexia in teenage girls and wanting to be a boy are two sides of the same coin.

And also, as JaukiVexnoydi suggests, this article and the whole narrative around "trans kids will commit suicide without gender-affirming care" and referring to puberty-blockers and trans body-modification as "life-saving care" obviously lead impressionable children to believe that without these things they are destined to commit suicide.

Children being encouraged to think of suicide as inevitable for them if they experience gender distress is incredibly irresponsible. We know from the clusters of suicide in young people that even viewing suicide as doable and a realistic option increases the risk to a child, so obviously the messaging of "life-saving gender-affirming care" and the language used to describe it is going to increase the risk of these kinds of harrowing scenarios taking place.

The other thing that's scary is that if gender distress can be exacerbated by social contagion, and suicide risk can be increased by social contagion, then the combination of those facts with the messaging around "life-saving gender-affirming care" is incredibly dangerous for all of our children and young people.

Gender Identity Ideologues are obviously going to use this case to argue for continued lack of psychological intervention and the acceleration of medical transition with no questions asked, but this case actually shows that the opposite is needed - what is actually needed is early psychological intervention, and for the trans lobby to stop telling kids they're destined to commit suicide.

I suggest anyone who wants to help complains about the phrasing of the Daily Mail article today as the more gender-questioning children see this, the more children are at risk.

That poor child. And their poor family.

I'd be interested to know what affirming care means in this situation and how it would have effectively ended all risk in a child with anorexia and dysphoria. Are we talking social transition? Hormones? Surgery? It cannot be a case that children are given such drastic, unplanned, unassessed access to drastic medical treatment on the grounds that if they don't they will harm themselves. Any more than you can say to an anorexic child yes, yes, you can have weight loss surgery and help to starve yourself right now and there, we've ended your wish to harm yourself.

It's a ridiculously naive view of the complexities of the situation, the child's distress will re focus to a new target as many de transitioners have explained, and it's about proper support and management of a child in such acute mental distress. It's like the men are unsafe in prisons thing - yes, it's true, they are, AND this should be addressed urgently, BUT the answer cannot be the political one being pushed for which is 'and so put them in women's prisons'. There are many other ways to keep male people safe, and there should equally be many other ways to help a very distressed teen bent on self harm safe and to relieve their immediate distress while looking into the longer term issue of need and treatment. I do hope we're not going to see this terrible failure of this poor child used for political leverage to achieve a political goal rather than really seek the best care of children in such distress.

Yes. I think you are right about this.

Trans lobby groups have twisted trans health care so much that I believe that we are definitely seeing the repercussions here.

In Australia, there is also the added fear of clinicians for prosecution for ‘conversion therapy’ in some states (I cannot remember if NSW has passed that yet, maybe someone can clarify).

"Noah was again treated for anorexia at Westmead Children's Hospital and was assessed by a social worker who suggested he needed to be seen by staff who could help with his gender dysphoria."

"But that was halted by a senior staff member outside the gender clinic who said clinicians needed to focus on dealing with his anorexia in isolation."

I can't help but wonder how much of Noah's distress was down to the fact that all of the people assigned to help them kept telling Noah and the family that they aren't qualified to handle gender dysphoria, as if it sits outside the realms of mainstream psychology.

In any other scenario, someone who is clinically qualified to help inpatients with anorexia would be confident to deal with a child's other psychological and body issues, but with gender, practitioners have been trained to view it as a separate magical layer of existence in a class of its own and unfathomable to psychologists. (And of course they're understandably concerned about their own liability and about being able to administer effective psychological support while also pretending that gender distress has no link to psychology whatsoever.)

This was touched upon in the interim Cass report - that CAMHS, GPs and social workers were unwilling to help children as they saw gender issues as outside of their area of expertise, which led to no-one being willing to help children until they saw a gender specialist, And then CAMHS would be unwilling to support kids with gender distress for other mental health issues too, even in cases where common sense would dictate that lowering a child's overall distress would likely be beneficial to the child even if some or all of the gender distress remains.

What I feel this very sad story illustrates, is the inevitable distress caused to children and young people when health professionals essentially tell them "you have something wrong with you that I'm not qualified to treat because it's so complex and I don't really understand it myself, but the waiting list to see the people who are qualified to help you is several years long, so you're basically screwed until then".

Dr Cass has the right idea shifting the responsibility for these cases back to their local mental health teams and directing them to take a holistic approach, and the obvious solution is to empower GPs and CAMHS and social workers to handle the psychological issues the accompany gender distress, instead of following the non-medically trained trans lobby's advice that "no-one can possibly understand gender distress apart from the individual experiencing it".

This case is very sad, but I can't help wondering if this child might still be alive if medical professionals hadn't capitulated to the trans lobby and agreed that people suffering with gender distress know better than doctors how to handle gender distress.

This child's death is a stark warning that the trans lobby's advice to medical professionals that gender distress and psychological distress are completely unrelated is absolute nonsense, and that the medical profession should be taking the lead on psychological care, and not letting unqualified gender identity ideologues call the shots on child mental health.

@NotBadConsidering pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/

pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-have-nearly-half-of-transgender-australians-attempted-suicide

Medical articles and rhetoric would say otherwise.

This article breaks Samaritans guidance on reporting of suicide.

Attributing suicide to being "because of" something someone did or failed to do is wrong, untrue, unhelpful and encourages other people in similar situations to believe that suicide is an appropriate response.

People commit suicide because of mental illness. That illness should have been treated and it is a tragedy that this teen didn't.

To illustrate with an unrelated scenario. Say that there was a suicide by someone who developed a serious depression following dire financial trouble that left them penniless. People do sometimes get into dreadful financial trouble but they don't all commit suicide. Many of them sort themselves out, rebuild their lives and are eventually fine again. If another person teetering on the brink of suicidal depression after bankruptcy reads a news article about someone else who killed themselves apparently "because of" bankruptcy that could push them towards doing likewise. Responsible narrative around reporting of suicide should never attribute the suicide to external "reasons" like this. The real reason is that they were mentally ill and didn't get help. If someone's brain is malfunctioning to that extent then solving the apparent external "cause" doesn't give them a stable and rational mind - you could give the bankrupt person £500,000 and they would still have an unbalanced mind, rich people can commit suicide too.

In the case of this teen, the suicidal feelings needed a totally separate treatment to the gender dysphoria issues. There's no evidence that "gender affirming" treatment would have helped, there have also been many suicides among trans people who have received treatment, because the gender-related actions do not deal with the fundamental issue of the unstable suicidal mind. There are also plenty of people who identify as trans and who don't experience suicidal thoughts, because they aren't experiencing a suicidal mental illness at the same time as dealing with their gender issues. However, for those teens on the cusp who are experiencing traumatic suicidal thoughts, headlines like this make it less likely that they will get the right treatment.

”Gender issues” in children do not have a high rate of suicide.

They wanted to treat the anorexia before the gender issues. Both have high rates of suicide. But this poor kid and their issues suits the narrative and is being used as an example of how puberty blockers save lives. I hope their parent somehow find some peace eventually.

This is why the myth of the transexual child is so harmful. There is no exact way to diagnose that a child is a transexual....they may be on the autistic spectrum, be gay, have an eating disorder, be being abused so wish to escape their lived reality etc etc. Some will suffer body dysmorphia but we know that the majority grow out of it after going through puberty.

Managing expectations really doesn't seem to be a thing does it.

What other " treatment" is given so much credit. Theres little thats an instant problem free fix. Much requires the patient to also help themselves and a lack of mental or physical capacity to do so can prove to be an obstacle in obtaining treatment. Surely drs would be extremely wary of any patient walking in claiming if they don't get X Y Z they will kill/hurt hemselves or demanding specific treatment with such a high dependency placed on something that may not work ?

Poor kid.
'Gender affirming care' is such a loaded term. I feel that so many TRAs have blood on their hands as they have terrified so many kids into thinking that if someone doesnt believe what they believe about gender, its because they hate them and want them dead. It is a terrifying state to be in as an autistic teenager who already is struggling with their body and feelings of identity in the world.
I am assuming they didnt receive fatness affirming therapy and starvation advice for their anorexia treatment either?
Poor child.

What a tragedy though.

I do wonder though how much mental health support this poor child got. For either issue. That wasn’t touched on at all.

Tying this to gender dysphoria is very poor reporting.

Westmead children’s hospital has been released several papers over the past years from their gender treatment specialists. They were up front in stating that parents and overly involved support groups had been responsible for prepping children attending sessions to demand particular treatment paths and how this impeded proper diagnosis. They also pointed out that appropriate care of co morbities was being hindered by this also.

The specialists there have been raising alarms and seem to be largely ignored.