An earlier article in The Spectator by James Kirkup raised some of the current issues around treating children and young people:
(extract)
"Dr Polly Carmichael, who runs the GIDS, in a recent talk to the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. In her thoughtful hour-long lecture, she said this:
“The rapid rise in the number of assigned females…. exemplifies the importance of keeping discourse open and allowing different voices to be heard.
“You might say the increase in the numbers of assigned females coming forward is [because] that it’s easier for females to talk about their gender-diverse feelings so what we are seeing is an increase in awareness getting towards a better representation of the true prevalence of this among females.
“A converse explanation, a question: are there issues for young women around how they perceive their gender? There has been a worry by some that people who would previously have had an outcome around sexuality are now having an outcome around gender.”
(In other words, these are girls who do not readily identify with the predominant idea of femininity and are sexually attracted to biological females, and who would, a decade or two ago, have grown up to consider themselves lesbians.) Dr Carmichael’s conclusion:
“The truth is we don’t know, but we need discussion in order to be thinking about what this could mean.”
Just in case that’s not clear, let me sum it up: the country’s leading centre for the care of gender-variant children says its caseload has risen more than twentyfold (35 times for girls) in less than a decade. The head of that centre doesn’t know why that’s happened and says the question needs further discussion."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/
embedded link to Dr Carmichael's talk:
soundcloud.com/user-664361280/dr-polly-carmichael-developments-and-dilemmas