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....

I am truly astonished to hear that desisting transition has dropped from 80% to 1% in just a few years.
It's practically a miracle, innit?

Sounds more like a tragedy to me, especially if we are talking about children and young people for whom transitioning means a lifetime on medication with significant damaging effects, the desire for major operations and a high likelihood of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with what must be a pretty unsatisfactory outcome. And this compared to reconciliation of the mind with the body, no medication, no need for any operations and the likelihood of a life where the normal desires most people discover in time are important, ie to have relationships and a family are still achievable.

But hey passing a little bit better for the sex you are not is what matters isn't it?

I'm not an academic but I am a lawyer used to reading things with a critical eye. The passages quoted above show a clear lack of objectivity by the author.

'Globally detransition rates are less than 1%'

They have reliable stats from all over the world? Syria, DRC, Kyrgyzstan?

Wow.

I thought it was stuff like major vaccine programmes they tried to track that closely at a global scale, and even then they struggle sometimes.

That is incredibly interesting thank you.

If be interested in reading more, do you have a source?

Current treatments for trans people, on the whole, statistically, are one of the most successful treatments in medicine science.

Wow, like everything you said that is completely inconsistent with most everything we know, gonna have to ask you for some evidence on that.

And, "medicine science" isn't a thing.

making a convoluted reverse-engineered takedown

That's a very loaded way to describe our discussion of the numerous methodological flaws and conflicts of interest in this study.

Sometimes people who are not trans may end up getting treated.

These people are not acceptable collatoral damage and the diagnostic pathway should be thorough enough to filter them out. If one percent of mastectomies for breast cancer or orchidectomies for testicular cancer turned out to have been unnecessary because of a false positive diagnosis, there would rightly be an outcry because that level of misdiagnosis, with lifelong consequences from the treatment, would be unacceptable.

Another lass. Thanks I didn't know that about the tax law context. It's brutal isn't it - and completely disfunctional that this kind of bullying is being used to push through policy changes without proper discussion.
If I remember he questioned how sensible it is to base all women shortlists on self Id. But it's odd that instead of going quiet he has gone full on evangelist.

He's now blocking people who are asking the sensible questions about the study on that thread.

David Allen Green is just misogynist I think. Much too keen on obscenity laws being changed to allow horrible stuff to be done to women: twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1090958269881950208

Eurgh.

A while ago I read that the NHS issues new NHS numbers when patients legally change their sex and that this makes any follow up trickier?

I am truly astonished to hear that desisting transition has dropped from 80% to 1% in just a few years. It's practically a miracle, innit?

Isn't it just?

"Oh, they weren't really trans to begin with."

Why is the fucking standard of care affirmation then? Jesus fucking Christ.

Timfortea - the NHS changes your medical number under your new preferred gender long before you get a GRC. Like getting a passport in your new "sex", you just need to tell your GP you are serious about changing gender. Then the NHS has no way of knowing what biological sex you are - for the purposes of screening, research, statistics etc, and also for follow up purposes.

I suppose 10 years ago the numbers of patients involved would be tiny. Now there's an explosion in numbers it's going to be hard to say it's not going to be a problem.

The thing is I expect many transgender people would not have a problem with keeping their biological sex on their record, as long as their chosen gender was used for day to day purposes?

Surely studies like this only have any value if there is a control group. If there is no control there is no comparison available. If a control group existed you may find 50% of patients had grown to be happy (ish) in their own skin without the need for lifelong medication and complex surgeries.

I'm a psychologist but would be ashamed if I had to resort to submitting my research to such a low grade "journal". This looks more like a student project than a credible piece of scientific research.

I have looked very briefly at some of the links here.

www.gendergp.com/evidenced-research-on-detransition-regret-newsnight/?fbclid=IwAR0-LKpbaFluVJ1QiqgSfLHPXKyvqCYdKgGrbVeG0s8Pe1Hvj1vv67sQA84

What I think is very interesting is that the first stats are from about 15 years ago, I wonder if those studies were repeated the percentage of detransitoners would be much higher.

More recent studies look like putting the rate at 1-2.2% Which I think is going to end up being a massive under representation.

The argument on some links is that transphobia leads people to detransition, but it seems there is more acceptance now, than at any time in history.

What I think would be more useful would be for the trans community to engage with this situation and help the medical profession know how to better assist people who are presenting at gender identity clinics etc. Because clearly some people are going to seek transition when a different route would be better for them.

Lumene @Nov 26, 14:53 re trans suicide rates: Dhejne et al. 2011 a Swedish study, found suicide rates were actually a bit higher post-surgery.

McNeil et al 2012 is the usual source for the statistic about high suicide rates. That was a pilot study using self-selected respondents on the web who self-reported their attempts. There was no followup or verification of the self-reports. It would have been pointless under those experimental conditions, but there were also no controls.

Besides Dhejne et al, I've seen discussions about a few other studies with reasonable methodology, and they also did not find elevated numbers of suicides in pre-op trans people.

‘Transphobia’ in this situation would more accurately be interpreted as ‘failure of the world to see them as they would like to see themselves’. In other words, finally recognising that ‘transitioning’, hormones, surgery, voice coaching, clothes, make up etc can never actually make them change sex and ultimately they will have to accept they are the sex they have been since conception. That is not to say transitioning might not help but it is intensive psychological support to accept their sex that is missing.

freethegenders

Is a massive troll.

I have read far too many online posts by people like that.

'Globally detransition rates are less than 1%'

Probably bs but the argument is two-fold:

wpath2016.conferencespot.org/62620-wpathv2-1.3138789/t001-1.3140111/f009a-1.3140266/0706-000523-1.3140268

As this study by wpath (trans lobby group) shows, no one desisted (though I heard someone claim by now 1 did) of the group that was given blockers, whereas 90% desisted of those that weren't.

Next comes the whammy that people who detransition were obviously never trans to begin with, only the true trans people got the blockers, and voila, you have magically removed 'detransitioners'

With regards to this thread more specifically - no mention of state of transition (i.e. what was done, in particular were blockers given) at the start of the study and how much later they followed up. Absolute rubbish.

One thing is clear. Whether or not taking strong drugs and having multiple cosmetic surgeries is good for a person's psychological well-being is unknown. But what is 100 percent true is that these interventions are harmful physically. So even if they have a cheering effect on the individual's mood, there is a high price to pay as a formerly healthy person becomes a permanent patient.

The BMJ gets thrown up and is never challenged if someone things it has an anti-trans bent to it.
That was an extensive review of all studies on the effects of puberty blockers, which concluded that there was no evidence to show they were a safe treatment. It was an evidence review by a professor of evidence based medicine at oxford university. A person who's a top of a career looking, without bias, at medical evidence.

He didn't say it couldn't be proven to be safe in the future, he said there's no evidence now. He was reviewing evidence, and there isn't any!!

I've seem him challenged all the time, with exceptional statements such as:
He's transphobic.
He's not an expert on gender dysphoria.

Clearly he should have made some evidence up so as a society we could throw some more children under the bus, to validate a tiny minority of adults.

The BMJ isn’t challenged because in the grown up world you don’t challenge something by simply stamping your foot and shouting ‘take it away, I don’t like it!’. In the real world you have to provide evidence in order to challenge something and there isn’t any.

And it is clear who is being ‘anti-trans’ when the protestor is asking that trans people are treated with unlicensed, unevidenced, unregulated, harmful, and experimental medications and surgeries.

What they should be doing is finding people who have detransitioned (e.g. by contacting Charlie Evans and seeing if people who have been in touch with her could contact them), and reviewing their history. Then they can see if detransitioners are being seen by gender clinics or not. If they aren't then it will show that this sort of study is not an accurate representation of the situation. (It still wouldn't be an accurate study in terms of percentages etc as it would be self selecting, but it would give some idea of the trends.)

Other issues are with what level of intervention has been carried out. If someone has had their penis removed it's not an easy thing at all to reverse. There is a strong incentive to stay with the surgery. If it was taking hormones then I think there would still be long term effects but it would be easier to reverse. What should be looked at is whether people have better mental outcomes after transitioning.

It is a mental health issue, which is almost always a long term problem, so should be reviewed over the long term. It is not the same as medicine for treating physical health problems. Just as psychiatric drugs should be looked at over the long term as well.

The medical community knew there were such things as detransitioners since at least 1982. It's noted in papers on transsexuals by Billings & Urban. They've failed to do proper follow-up studies to track them for going on 4 decades and I don't believe that's an accident. IMO this paper is "nothing to see here" propaganda so they can go back to burying their heads in the sand.

There's a stat I read I'd like to track down if anyone else remembers the source?? It noted after 5 years doctors treating transgender patients lost track of something like 50% of their patients, after 8-10 years like 80%. I could have these numbers wrong, I wanted to check. If that's even in the ballpark of accurate it implies more detransitioners than anyone will ever admit.

Oh wow. I hadn't got to the part of the thread where the author is trans and edits the journal the paper was published in. I know the field of psychology has a credibility crisis but this is more like misconduct.