I can totally see that this was the wrong choice for them and they could have been helped better but no one diagnoses anyone with this there are no tests you can take all that people do is allow you to validate how you feel there is a misunderstanding that doctors can tell you your trans and that if they don't done how your not in the years that I saw them all they did was asked me if I was a woman in various ways and helped eventually facilitate treatment for me. this is on the whole a self diagnosed condition and that does mean we can be wrong. I 100% agree that our reasons should he explored and do worry about the effects of trauma on people. I had a successful transition but in done respects I'm lucky though I do have a nerve issue due to surgery. as I said this is not perfect but this was the best I could do. others I know were not so lucky but that does not mean that being trans is the lesser option. it is about finding peace within yourself something that no treatment can do in its own. we all do things to ourselves that we have to find a way to live with the good and the bad I am fully aware that one day I may not feel like this but I can not see it.
Bespin many of us really do understand and empathise with feelings of distrss and mental illhealth. In ourselves and in others. And what lengths that may drive people to. Consciously or unconsciously.
Your post above horrifies me, because it is exactly what I believe is terribly wrong with how trans people are nothelped nowadays.
This is not the approach that doctors should be taking. Symptoms can be self diagnosed, but there are diagnostic questionnaires and therapies that should be exploring people's reasons for having these symptoms. It can be explored and understood and differential diagnoses must be explored. There is nothing inevitable about any of this. That is the failing of doctors. It is verging on criminal in my view as there are other options and theories that can explain and help, and they are not being considered.
No other physical or mental health medical issue just gives the patient what they want by the patient's own diagnosis. It is insanity to do so. That it may be coerced by people feeling suicidal is even worse. And no other suicidal patients get treated so deferentially I can tell you. Something is very, very wrong here.
Of course one cannot force on people that there may be trauma in their past if they do not remember it that would be abusive, but that it may surface later is exactly what happens to many people, and exactly what happened to the person in the article. But this is why years therapy need to be started and people seen earlier by the right therapists. To give people time to explore what is happening to them and how they feel. Social transition was used in some cases to help stabilise people while longterm therapy was continued, and of course some people will always suffer with thier symtoms. Mediation and therapy is not a magic wand. That we now give people hormones and surgery is a line that we should not have crossed. This is where we started with quick fix boob and nose jobs. Fixing the symptoms not the cause. Fixing the object of the MH problem.
This is why treating children with identity/ dysphoria issues early is exactly what we need to be doing. But treating them with talking therapies and people with safe boundaries who can help them learn to cope with their feelings and symptoms whilst the causes are explored. Not with unquestioning affirmation.
It is wrong that doctors are quick fixing, colluding, enabling, or worse (some of these transition doctors I really have concerns about). I suggest that it there is something there that 'fits' very well with the types of parents and childhood that trans people experience, and their transition actually becomes another type of abuse or failure by those who are supposed to care for them.
We have terrible mental health care in this country and it is getting worse and more dangerous all the time. I am frustrated and scared for people. Women because we always bear the brunt of it in so many ways, and for trans people too. And the males that I believe experienced abuse and trauma that go undiagnosed and may go on to perpetuate abuse and damaging behaviour. It truly is a nightmare.