To expect more responsibility for our Autistic young people

[Kalalily]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly0ppdzj2yo

BBC News reporting that the NHS have halted prescribing cross sex hormones to new patients under the age of 18. Instead, they will be offered other forms of treatment for their gender dysphoria.

“The review was triggered following the publication of a major report into children's gender care by Dr Hilary Cass in April 2024, which said "remarkably weak evidence" on medical interventions was letting children down.”

Private gender clinics continue to operate in an unprofessional manner and will prescribe to anyone who declares their identity as trans regardless of autism and coexisting mental health conditions such as trauma and bullying. They will do the assessment but prescribe regardless of severe autism and trauma.

Such a lack of responsibility for our autistic young people is shocking to witness. Why has it taken NHS England the best part of a year to act on the advice of the Cass Report, which was four years in the making, and why are private gender clinics allowed to continue to profit from young people’s distress. They and their families deserve so much better.

All our institutions seem to have their minds taken over by a virus in which the infected had to pretend that cross-dressing men are women.

It's great that sanity if finally returning but goodness knows how much damage has been done.

So out of all the ways autistic children and young people are let down and at risk from this is the only issue you care about and feel the need to start a thread on?

So sick of children and young people
being weaponised in this debate
as is the author of the Cass report.

The vile anti trans anti autism rhetoric that you read about on here probably helps exacerbate many MH problems young people struggling with this have.

No of course this is not the only topic that I care about regarding autistic young people. I also care about eating disorders, OCD, annxiety, depression and trauma, all of which are treated by the NHS and private clinics with evidence based treatments. The reason I started a tread on this is because it is in the news today and because I’m wondering why it took so long for under 18s to be protected in this way. And because I believe that if you are 17 years and 366 days old you also need protection so I think we need to keep talking about this subject and ensuring that people who do not fully understand the complexity of the situation do not drive the narrative. And equally private clinics should not make a profit out of our young people’s distress. It is no comfort to know that the lawsuits have started because by the time they are coming in sufficient numbers, these clinics will have closed and there will be no redress.

But autistic people are often not being treated for all those things. They are mostly left and are very unlikely to receive autism aware care of any sort if they are one of the few that do get treatment.

you are right and it is not good enough. For me, the lack of responsibility for autistic people around trans health care is particularly shocking as the affirmation only model which has been offered up until now has concretised young people into a position from which they find it very hard to return. Social transitioning leads to hormones and ultimately surgery. These lifelong body modifications have happened to too many young people who now regret decisions they made as teenagers, when adults, particularly clinicians should have been looking out for them and only offering evidence based treatments and certainly not treatments which were irreversible. The care they were offered wasn’t even experimental as they were not followed up. It is medical negligence and it needs to be called out, hence my post.
But I agree with you, autistic young people also need person centred care for all mental health conditions, particularly anorexia.

They need care full stop so forgive my frustrations at yet another anti trans thread jumping on the faux giving a shit about Autism band wagon.

Autistic children and young people are dying from lack of MH treatment and autism awareness. Start a thread about that.

Young people who are gender questioning need appropriate services.

Autistic young people need appropriate services.

There are quite a lot of autistic young people who need help with both gender questioning and other issues.

The problem is wasting money on inappropriate care, which has no or very poor evidence base.

This inappropriate care - puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, damaging and sterilising surgeries - this is very expensive and very damaging.

It's time to provide evidence based care which helps, not harms.

@SpiderKing If you want to start a specific thread, go ahead.

Don't police this one with your 'antitrans' accusations.

It's a total nonsense word and many of us prefer to use more specific words to identify the issues of gender questioning children.

Both autistic and trans young people are being completely weaponised by this issue.

None of you care about autism, if you did you’d start a thread about the far bigger issue but all you want to do is focus on this which is pretty deplorable.

No it’s time to give all autistic children all the MH treatment, support, care and SEND that they need not focus on your niche little issue which only impacts 4%.

@SpiderKing Try reading it again.

“Gender affirming care for children” resulting in chemical castration - diminished/no sexual function and infertility - represents a shameful period in medical history.

I’m hopeful that we’re at the beginning of the end but the adults and institutions that were captured by this should be mortified.

I totally agree with you. My young person is one of the autistic children who has been so badly let down by a number of adults in the healthcare service. And what is really really hard to bear is the fact that i think that these healthcare professionals don’t actually believe in trans themselves, but they are colluding with the identity out of fear, even though my child is no threat to anyone, except themselves. 😢

And children with care experience are also over represented- and like autistic DC their vulnerability doesn’t stop at 18.
All DC need better health care, but resources have been wasted on this barbaric ‘treatment’ which actually damages them rather than helping them.
That said, the damage underway in schools is the bigger issue. Even the most vulnerable don’t necessarily get as as far as medical intervention, but plenty of damage is done by the social transitions school has been implementing. Plus of course the narrative about how everyone is out to get them, and they will die young from suicide or murder, so the health consequences of hormones and surgery are irrelevant. It’s an appalling narrative for our DC.
My young person fobbed off every discussion about the long term impact of Testosterone, because she’s gonna die before 30 anyway. Statistics apparently. Infuriating.

So don’t you come at me with your ‘you don’t care about the dc, stop weaponising them’ crap. I’m not in the mood.