AIBU about transgender person taking legal action against NHS for allowing her to transition? [[title edited by MNHQ on OP's behalf]]

[HollyGoLoudly1]

A 23 year old is taking legal action against the NHS for giving her treatment to transition to male as a teenager. She has since decided to live as a female and is taking legal action against the NHS as they should have 'challenged her' more when she wanted to transition rather than giving her the treatment.

The NHS can't do right for doing wrong here. Cash strapped to the point of collapse and being sued for giving someone the treatment they asked for. I despair.

AIBU or is this absolutely ludicrous?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51676020
from MNHQ - this title and OP originally said the person concerned was suing the NHS. They are in fact just taking legal action. The OP has asked us to make this clear but you may find some of the early posts reflect the words in the original title

Mental health services have been and continue to be cut to pieces by the government. That is why there is not more talking therapy for young people with GID. It is not because of mermaids.
This review is a good thing. But the tavistock should not be the target for blame here.
GIDS is just one tiny part of what the tavistock does- but pretty much the only bit the press is interested in. The clinicians working there (in all departments) want to help children, young people and adults with complex mental health difficulties. It is getting harder and harder. Who would want to work in GIDS where whatever you do you can get called a child abuser? Easy to see this as straightforward when you are not actually faced with it.

Have a look at the range of services and trainings that happen at the tavistock (and Portman). Nobody works there unless they are committed to trying to do something to make a difference to suffering. Everyone could earn more by just abandoning the stress of the underfunded nhs and working in private practice.

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk

If you really care about the lack of talk therapy, please campaign about that - rather than assuming this is due to clinicians at the tavistock just not bothering.

Suing won’t get her back to where she wants to be. Was the NHS originally designed for this type of care?

I’m with closet, there should be a strict age limit set and people should pay . Flame away ...

At the end of the day, girls are handed hormone suppressors and all sorts from age 13 and none are ever classed as being vulnerable and not having enough support to decide.

YappityYapYap what are you alluding to here?

They are given to delay certain aspects of male/female puberty only.

It’s not possible to just delay puberty. Puberty is a time when many physiological processes occur that are all linked with each other. Changing hormones at this time is not just about abiding showing primary or secondary sexual attributes (breasts, hair etc...). It’s also about bone and being protected from osteoporosis. It’s about the Brain and the way it develops...
Allowing teenagers to get those hormones with no or little evidence is playing with their life. We would never allow that to happen in any other circumstances .

"She was given 'puberty blockers' at the age of 16 to delay some signs of puberty until she decided what she wanted to do."

And if those drugs they gave her blocked her brain from maturing as well as her body how could she grasp the implications of further drugs and surgery?

Look at the difference in outcomes between those given drugs and those given counselling and support instead.

35 Tavistock clinicians including a Governor have resigned over Tavistock policy though, in three years, isn't that right?

So yes, it looks like they're current method of 'helping children' is controversial - to say the least.

@user1494050295, no it won’t change a lot FOR HER.
It might prevent other teenagers to go down the same track and suffer as a consequences of it.
She is clearly not doing that or herself but for others.

TheWordWomanIsTaken , I agree this is about making children available to men. Also, transactivists need ‘‚transgender children’ to bolster their claim that transgenderismis part of the normal spectrum.

The irony, for liberals who think this about liberation, is that you can only believe in ‘gender identity’ if you believe outdated sexual stereotypes (boys don’t like pink, girls do etc) are immutable truth. If you believe all humans can like or dislike all kinds of things, regardless of whether they have ovaries or not, you see gender identity for the nonsense it is.

GIDs is separate to the other stuff at the Tavistock.

Here’s an article by former Tavistock Governor, Marcus Evans: quillette.com/author/marcus-evans/

35 psychologists have quit GIDS in 3 years, because they don’t feel able to properly help gender distressed children and teens under the current circumstances. It’s a shit show.

The problem here is that NHS treatment which we all depend on, has been massively politicised in this one specific area. Such that child safeguarding and normal standards of medical ethical consent are out the window. Nobody should be giving permanent, life altering, bone thinning, IQ lowering, natural fertility obliterating, sexual function removing treatments to distressed kids. They should be given a ton of professional expert emotional support to help them to deal with the emotional problems they are having. These are kids. There’s not even evidence that these treatments are safe or that they resolve the emotional distress that has prompted them.

I didn’t say that crappy MH services were due to any particular NhS organisation. agree that decades of under investment is a key issue - along with a political view that the electorate won’t like higher taxes to pay for better (or indeed any) health and social care.

The Tavistock screwed up on this though.

That is why there is not more talking therapy for young people with GID. It is not because of mermaids.

Mermaids & other trans lobby groups have been pressuring NHS Tavistock GIDS to adopt affirmative medical interevntions rather than slower watchful waiting approaches for many years.

That's a matter of record.

May 2018 Spectator article by James Kirkup
Why are some MPs trying to shut down the transgender debate?
(extract)
"Despite its influence, it is worth noting what Mermaids is not. It is not a research body. Its activities are support (for families) and advocacy: based on its contacts with those families, it argues for what it sees are better policies and practices by the NHS and others. It does not carry out or commission clinical or academic research. Its most recent annual report lists among its charitable activities “campaigning and advocacy” and says: “Mermaids has also become more active in lobbying”.

There is regular dialogue between Mermaids and the GIDS, but the two sides do not always agree. An example is on the time the GIDS team take to give referred children the hormone-blocking drugs that stop their bodies developing the physical characteristics associated with their birth sex.

In evidence to another Commons inquiry in 2015, Mermaids argued that GIDS should make such drugs available much more quickly. The GIDS team has generally resisted that call, more than once saying that “any decision around hormone treatment needs time and considered thought.”

And in evidence to that earlier committee, Dr Bernadette Wren of the GIDS said this:

“I know that Susie and Mermaids would like a fast track so that young people who are already well into puberty and feel that they know that they want to move forward into physical intervention would bypass our assessment process and move straight into physical intervention. We feel that is not an ethical way to practise.”

Here’s another summary. A transgender charity that says it is engaged in lobbying lobbied politicians and doctors to change the way children are treated by doctors. The doctors declined to make that change because it would be not be ethical to do so." (continues)

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/

Agree that all mental health services need better funding*, but that’s not a reason to let the Tavistock off the hook for using adult cancer drugs on kids without cancer.

*there is a 7 year wait between child and adolescent mental health services and adult services in my area. CAMHS calls it ‘the black hole’. It means the only way a person between the ages of 18 and 25 can see the mental health team is by accessing it via the duty psychiatrist at A&E.

'GIDs is separate to the other stuff at the Tavistock'.

Yes it is only one department out of many. But the psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists are still there because they are trying to do their best in an underfunded system.

Clinicians have to make difficult decisions all the time. Medication for ADHD, or any drug treatment given to children can have long term implications. Drugs are not given out for fun. People are trying to do their best in unknown territory. Nobody knows for sure what is best for these young people.

As R0wantrees has said, this is long, long overdue.

Thank goodness it’s happening now.

I think someone upthread may have referred to this too, but it bears repeating - children as young as 11/12 are being given these puberty blockers, which almost inevitably lead onto cross-sex hormones later on. One consequence of this, besides the general health issues like bone density and IQ loss, is virtually guaranteed sterility.

So even though adult women in their 20’s or even 30’s, who may already have children, are often denied sterilisation or hysterectomy because they “might change their minds later”, these children are being allowed to make the decision never to be able to have biological children of their own at the age of 11 or 12.

HOW can this enormous disparity be justified??

Informed consent? I don’t think so.

Horrifying, IMO.

The age limit should be 25 and it should not be available free on the NHS.

Nobody knows for sure what is best for these young people
Which is precisely why this judicial review is necessary.

Yes mermaids put pressure on- but so do the voices shouting neglect and malpractice on the other side.
Who would want to work there in this context?

'Which is precisely why this judicial review is necessary.'

I agree. But it won't give any magic answers- because there aren't any.

Who would want to work there in this context?

Adult gender services also struggle to recruit. It’s a very hard patient cohort to help.
That’s why John Hopkins, the pioneer hospital for gender reassignment, stopped providing the service. It’s recently been reinstated, but America is using ‘informed consent’ to get around medical malpractice claims.

Thinking and Lola
Exactly, and say the magic word trans and ALL safeguarding leaves the room in children's services as well as female spaces.
MRAs have certainly done us over. This is why I feel there should be a campaign to repeal the GRA (even though there is de facto self-id because of untruths around the original GRA legislation and the EA peddled by Stonewall/Mermaids et al).
This de facto self-id allows unfettered access to children and women by abusive men. And organisations and institutions (including schools) seem to be oblivious to it in their haste to wave their rainbow flags and be stonewall accredited.
And I think that giving agency to our children and alienating parents as transphobes is all part of the agenda alongside access.

So what I’m getting from your posts, FarFrom, is that you think GIDS should be free to carry on treating children as they are now and the JR shouldn’t go ahead.

Is that right?

Yes mermaids put pressure on- but so do the voices shouting neglect and malpractice on the other side.

People raising Safeguarding & Duty of Care concerns should be listened to in any service responsible for chidren & Vulnerable Adults.

No NHS service should be forced to change their protocols by lobby groups especially when they have determined there are ethical & Safeguarding issues.

Its ridiculous to suggest that a paediatric service in the UK cannot operate as per the standards that all other services in NHS do.

Many of the professionals who left the service did so after raising Safeguarding issues which were not properly addressed.
They are professonally required to whistle blow & of course many will judge it inappropriate to remain if they do not feel they can practice ethically & to the Safeguarding standards required.

'So what I’m getting from your posts, FarFrom, is that you think GIDS should be free to carry on treating children as they are now and the JR shouldn’t go ahead.

Is that right?'

No that is not right. I think the judicial review should happen. It is important.
But I dont think it will make things better sadly. There are no simple answers here. We need more money in mental health and more money for talk therapy. The review is unlikely to make that happen. GIDS is doing its best with too many referrals and not enough money for therapy . Which is exactly the same problem faced by every CAMHS service in the country.
GIDS try to encourage local camhs teams to keep their young patients for therapy regardless of their referral to gids- but the local services dont have the resources either.
I do think that the political and slightly voyeuristic interest in this service (including here) makes it a particularly hard service to work in. There are fewer cries of child abuse when other medication in CAMHS is given.