The whole phenomenon can be summed up as
"Medicalize youth for life into adulthood, and hope for the best"

It’s a group that already we’re at risk therefore it can prove both ways

Does Nick Wallis know about it, I wonder?
Edit for clarity: I mean the Finnish report.

It is definitely worthy of a second look.

I think we discussed it here @fanOfBen

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5513703-finnish-study-on-transition-and-psychiatric-outcomes-in-sex-and-gender-shows-increased-psychiatric-morbidity

When they can prove this, I'll believe it.

The counter argument is that belief that one is trans is itself a mental illness preceded by and co-morbid with many other symptoms. The obsessive determination with which TIPs cling to the idea that changing gender will solve all their psychological problems is yet another symptom of disordered thinking. Under these circumstances, it's not surprising the unresolved underlying mental illness remains once the individual has changed gender.

No of course it doesn't hold water, but the trans activists love it because it's impossible to disprove and makes the rest of us to blame for failing to be accepting enough of trans people.

Thanks, I think I'm going to start a separate thread for this.

That's a great foreword.
I've found the pdf, if anyone else wants it:
https://www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SEEN-report-14.pdf

Yes, there’s a mental health problem, and you treat it with physical solutions, which don’t resolve the mental health problem but cause physical problems on top. The psychological burden of managing the physical problems can’t help when you’ve already got enough going on.

But that argument doesn’t hold water.

If the treatment works, it has to work in the real world, as that world is.

This argument only works if we stop seeing transition as a treatment for distress and adopt the (frankly irrational) theory that “being trans” is a natural state of being, which requires treatment even if that treatment makes the psychological problems worse. I realise that is exactly why they have started to spin this theory, but it’s insane. If there is medical treatment for a condition, it has to be shown to solve the starting problem, which was distress. If it creates more problems than existed at the beginning, then the treatment is a failure.

The report itself is shocking, I wish I knew how to get mainstream media to pick it up.

@Thehorticulturalhussie Thanks for that - really interesting and bloody hurrah to Anne Fine for saying it.

Ha, same underlying issue for me! Definitely for the depression, possibly for the trans bit...

Possibly a good time to look at the report 'Through the Looking Glass' by SEEN in Publishing. Sorry, can't link to the PDF for some reason but please read it if you haven't already.

This is the fairly chilling foreword by Anne Fine, children's laureate.

Would it be possible to put together a more damning indictment of the world of children’s publishing than we have here? I doubt it. It is shameful. Shameful. Publishers will rush to climb on any bandwagon. But this one? Really?
This dismal betrayal of young readers. This unthinking capitulation to a biologically unfounded ideology whose false and troubling messages have damaged so many families. Over the last decade, publishers, booksellers, librarians and a bevy of joyless would-be authors became a major conduit for trans-activist propaganda and harmful lies, while others (whose books sold a good deal better) were bullied into silence, or out of their careers, by positively terrifying campaigns of cancellation and spite.
…[J]ust as the children’s publishing industry appears to have been the first captured, it is still almost the last redoubt of this dangerous idiocy. Everyone should read this report.
For far too long, children’s publishers and authors have ignored the safeguarding dangers of promoting trans ideology to young children and teens. A course correction is long overdue. We hope that this report will give readers pause for thought

@Seethlaw I’m in a similar boat with a chronic condition and being a middle aged woman. Always wondering if I could identify an underlying issue I could treat and get better! And the underlying issue is most likely to be parents that didn’t teach me self care and self love.

No, not hurtful. I've wondered the same thing.

To me, my being trans and my depression feel like two entirely separate things, but as many people who've had a medical syndrome diagnosed know, very disparate symptoms can turn out to be related. And after all, both severe depression and my own case of trans are seemingly psycho-neurological problems. So who knows, they could well be two arms of the same thing?

More generally, I would agree that, especially among young people, too many try to escape depression by seizing onto transition as a miracle solution - which only ends up making things worse.

Useful study to have confirmed what is not a surprise to anyone working with children.

The lie that this rubbish is for the benefit of children has to be quashed. It is purely for the benefit of adults and profit making.

Anyone promoting this crap needs to know that and know that they are doing children and young people lifelong harm so that people can make ever more money.

I hope this isn’t a hurtful thing for me to say-

My gut response is not that they have the same cause but that they are the same thing. Trans is one of the attempts troubled people seek to cure their trouble. On a par with self medication with substance abuse.

Solidarity. I am in the same situation, and have been for the past ten years. Transitioning did not help, and now she has long-term mental and physical health problems. And several suicide attempts after transitioning, including surgery, the full works.

The "suicide" threat that activists wheel out has so much to answer for. Transitioning (in our experience) was not the beginning of the "cure" - it's been the beginning of a lifetime of problems.

I was not a teenager when I transitioned, but...

Psychiatric needs do not subside after medical gender reassignment.

Can confirm: my severe depression didn't change one iota from before to after my transition. Because it wasn't related to that to begin with. And I can only imagine that if I had hoped that transitioning would help, then I would have found myself in that case:

Among adolescents who underwent medical gender reassignment, psychiatric morbidity increased markedly during follow-up

Actually, I'm morbidly (heh) curious as to the relationship between psychiatric disorders and being trans: is it possible that they have the same cause way down?

Very sad outcome for these vulnerable young people. We need to develop better systems for managing gender distress and properly exploring and treating the true underlying mental illness and/or social adversity causing it.

Funnelling more children and young adults down permanent medicalisation, sterility and life long physical health issues is not the answer. It's too late for a generation of GNC, autistic, traumatised and gay children and young people but we can protect future generations from this appalling iatrogenic harm.

Oh god yes, the study makes the puberty blocker trial completely medically and morally unethical.

I don't understand how it was started again and why it isn't being stopped.
.

Based on my family sample of one, I think the psychiatric issues come first and they attract people to the cool and trendy idea of being super special and different and obtaining victim status and lots of attention by declaring yourself to be trans. And then the physical damage caused by treatment and the social isolation that results does the rest. Can you tell I am so upset my what this has done to my poor, irreparably damaged relation. Who just needed proper support for undiagnosed autism and other disorders.