British Psychological Society paper shows that detransition is incredibly low.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

This was posted on Twitter by Jolyon Maugham.

He has helpfully posted a link to the paper ( shop.bps.org.uk/publications/journals-and-periodicals/counselling-psychology-review-vol-34-no-1-june-2019.html ) but you need to pay to view it.

The abstract states that they randomly chose 303 patient files, followed them up and found one case of detransition. They conclude that as detransition is so low there is no need to slow the "pathway".

I'd be really interested to know how rigourous the methodology is - for example the abstract does not state how many of the random patients were actually tracked down.

I know some folk on here are really good at critically analysing and deconstruction journal articles....

Isn't the counter factual also relevent...what would have happened to that group if they had never actually transitioned?

Glad this is being researched. I hope it means more researchers can now look at trans related topics in the spirit of open enquiry. The journal editor has a professional interest in this topic so it would be good to see papers on this from other journals too.

On last night's Newsnight section on detransitioners, one of them - I think it was Charlie - specifically said that people wanting to detransition didn't feel they could go back to the gender clinics.

You'd think they would have consulted with a detransitioners group and checked things like: who are you still in contact with? What services know you have made this choice and have taken note of what they did that you did or did not find helpful? What is the time period between transition and detransition?

Because they'd kind of be the expert on this stuff. It would be absolutely fabulous to know that the rate of people suffering from an experimental, untested, unethical fast track to extreme medication and surgery is as tiny as possible..... but they're going to need to look harder than this. And be prepared to track the rates into the next ten years for the sudden explosion of kids, particularly females, currently in the system.

You should see my latest study, which demonstrates that most people don't regret buying gym memberships.

The methodology was a spot poll that I conducted at the gym.

I also have one that demonstrates a 100% cancer survival rate among all the former cancer patients that returned our survey.

Ooh GOSH allmy cancer is cured!

The survey says so!

*Randomly selected from what/who?
Current patients at Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health

...

Also what does 'transitioned' mean in the paper?
A patient of the clinic.*

This isn’t adding up for me

So if you’re a patient of the clinic you are trans by their definition yet somehow you have detransitioners who are also trans.

Maybe they have Debbie from the nightline (?) interview (F2M2F)

It’s been noted over and over that the evidence base for this branch of medicine is very poor.

Given that the original program where all this was initiated stopped, I presume they did follow up some of their patients more thoroughly. A great pity that they did not publish papers providing evidence for the reasons they were stopping.

That, of course, is a failure in medicine. Positive results, especially those where there is profit to be made, are published while negative ones are brushed away.

It's not just that the research in this area is poor, it's that it's disingenuous to the point of deceitful. That's not a methodology anyone would adopt if they actually wanted to know about detransition rates. It's one designed to produce an at best uninformative result, which is framed in the paper as supporting a conclusion it doesn't come near meriting. Clinicians and researchers wanting to back away from this area I can understand. But the morals behind producing a paper as actively misleading as this go way beyond just carrying on treating without knowing outcomes. They are not only obscuring data on outcomes - by making it appear we have information we don't have - but they are also obscuring and arguing against the need for rigorous research into the impact of treatments which (among other impacts) create lifelong medical dependence, change the patient's appearance, and reduce or remove their fertility. Just wow.

Is this journal peer-reviewed, btw?

It is peer reviewed. The editor of the journal is Cristina Richards. Guess who is first author of thIs paper?

It is peer reviewed

How the fuck did that get peer reviewed

So it's in the Counselling Psychology Review, which is one of a large range of journals owned by the British Psychological Society (founded 1901). Their website is down, but the cache says:

Counselling Psychology Review | BPS - British Psychological Society
Counselling Psychology Review is the Division of Counselling Psychology's peer-reviewed research publication, bringing together high quality research pertinent to the work of counselling psychologists

That's pretty worrying.

Drspouse noooo... please tell me the author didn't publish this in the journal she edits...

Yep.

Allmywhat

Drspouse Well that's embarrassing.

From the BBC's expert women database:

Christina Richardss* is a doctor of counselling psychology and the first out trans/non-binary person to work in an NHS gender clinic

www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20180329140333407

No possibility of a conflict of interest there, then!

Ah. A patient who themselves receives the treatment under discussion, who wrote a paper with a disingenuously misleading methodology arguing that the treatment should not be subjected to further critical assessment, and published it in a journal of which they are editor. Right.

Am I the only one who finds the evangelism around this from the likes of Jolyon Maugham a bit odd? He desperately wants to prove that people are really 'trans' and that none of them ever make a mistake and regret transitioning. Why is he so evangelical about it?

Why are people so keen to 'prove' that transgenderism is always correctly diagnosed and needs lifelong medication (even though it isn't an illness), and that nobody ever wrongly diagnoses this non-illness (causing detransition), even though there are no objective criteria for diagnosis?

Indeed, not only are the procedures
currently used effective clinically but, for
those of a more brute pragmatic dispo-
sition, they are also effective economi-
cally. For instance, the cost per suicide
in England is £1.7 million (Knapp, McDaid
& Parsonage, 2011)

Slight derail but anyone able to shed light on that statistic? I can understand that some suicides eg jumping under a train will bring costs plus the expense of inquests etc.
But that does seem an excessive expense.

I'm obviously not intending to make light of suicide in any way, and feel very sad for any families affected, whatever the reason, (including my own). But I can't see a statistic like that and not want a cost breakdown, especially if they are going to argue that transition (and presumably all the expense of hormones and surgery etc) is cheaper than suicide.

Im going to generously assume that Maugham hasn't actually read the piece but I find it alarming that he's pushing that detransition isn't a thing.

Oops, xpost with OldCrone

Slight derail but anyone able to shed light on that statistic?

From the cited reference:

^The economic impacts of suicide are profound, although comparatively few studies have sought to quantify
these costs.Updating work undertaken previously by one of the authors,
i it is estimated that the average cost
per completed suicide for those of working age only in England is £1.67m (at 2009 prices).This includes
intangible costs (loss of life to the individual and the pain and suffering of relatives), as well as lost output
(both waged and unwaged), police time and funerals.^

www.gov.uk/government/publications/mental-health-promotion-and-mental-illness-prevention-the-economic-case