Apparently gender reassignment cures autism

[Siablue]

According to GIDS children ‘had no residual autistic traits’ after transitioning. This is a document from the NHS. I honestly have no words.

Nicky Clarke is writing to Matt Hancock so hopefully will get some response. But what a load of offensive bollocks. Even if they retract this there is no way that these people should be allowed to work with children.

Throughout my whole life people have been pushing a range of fake cures for autism and all of them have gone out of fashion but not before they did a massive amount of damage.

mobile.twitter.com/MrsNickyClark/status/1300736691502829568

Residual ASD? That again is offensive and I’ve never seen anyone talk about it like this. Residual? It’s not a fucking virus.

I suspect that they are using autism as a non specific catch all.

www.gires.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/GIRES-Young-People-Response-to-Service-Spec-1.pdf

This is a link to the quoted document.

it’s a commentary on another document, so you really need to see that to attempt to make sense of their claims.

this is obviously working on the premise that autism is caused by male brain (grinds teeth)

Is that premise obvious?

It doesn't sound at all obvious to me and I really don't think there's enough information in this document alone to make anything clear or obvious, since the underlying source document (the draft service specification) isn't included.

I'm not defending anyone or any of these mad 'claims', btw - I just don't feel there's enough information here yet to form a judgement on what's actually being said.

Haven’t read the thread.

But when, WHEN are we as a society going to stop trying to ‘cure’ autism?

I find it so fucking insulting.

For. Fuck's. Sake.

And it can "cure" homosexuality, too. Hurrah!

Would also be interested in the statistics of the amazing disappearance of ASD that was

a) originally diagnosed according to pathway standards by a qualified professional/standard assessment, and where this professional or team reassessed after the 'cure' with reported change in data demonstrating the significant change in outcome.

b) self reported by a person self diagnosed or self identified as Autistic

Excellent letter Suffrajester. It is so disappointing that it isn't the NAS coming down on GIRES like a ton of bricks. Why aren't they?

Maybe the same reason they ignored the whole bleach autism "cure" thing until it suited them. One person did all the work of raising awareness and investigating such things, yet the NAS wanted nothing to do with them - until the moment was right for them to swoop in and enjoy all the publicity.
The NAS doesn't give a fuck about autistic people, especially autistic adults. A fact proven by the fact they offer zero useful support to autistic adults and have very little to say about the mess of disability benefits.
Not that i trusted them before, but it became impossible to have any trust in or respect for any of the major disability charities in the UK when they were all clamouring to be part of the government's work programme. Only speaking out against it and benefit sanctions when it became clear they weren't getting a piece of the pie.

This is fantastic news. So if I identify as male I'll be able to finally understand all the social cues I miss? I'll be able to tell lies, get jokes, wear suncream, eat gloopy foods, get and hold down a job? The hum of the neighbours jacuzzi won't senf me into meltdown? And I can get rid of my support workers.

I'm off to buy some trousers from the men's section.

@FatCatThinCat

This is fantastic news. So if I identify as male I'll be able to finally understand all the social cues I miss? I'll be able to tell lies, get jokes, wear suncream, eat gloopy foods, get and hold down a job? The hum of the neighbours jacuzzi won't senf me into meltdown? And I can get rid of my support workers.

I'm off to buy some trousers from the men's section.

And more importantly FatCat society doesn’t really have to help you with those things or you know do anything different to make your life better. We don’t want difference don’t you know?!?!

FatCat just to clarify that was me being sarcastic 😊

@merrymouse

Skyliner

“Are often described as having no residual ASD”

The phrasing is odd (who talks about ‘ residual ASD’?), but I think it’s fair to understand this as ‘cure’.

That's pretty different from saying 'cure' TBH

FFS. As the probably autistic parent of a diagnosed autistic child, this is just bullshit.

I have a close family member who is also diagnosed with autism who has transitioned and would you believe, they're also still fucking autistic

This has made me cross

"residual ASD" what does that even MEAN?

That's pretty different from saying 'cure' TBH

Not really it isn't, there's no such thing as "residual ASD." If a person is autistic they'll always be autistic, it doesn't go away or "get better." Even if a person learns to function better in everyday life they will still be autistic.
By saying children "had no residual autistic traits" after transitioning, they're implying that transitioning does that. That transitioning results in autistic traits magically disappearing. So yeah, not too different from claiming it cures autism.

That's pretty different from saying 'cure' TBH

Only if you don't know what words mean.

"No" - none.

"Residual" - remaining after the greater part or quantity has gone.

It looks so you understand what words mean, just as much as they understand what ASD means. TBH.

@Datun

That's pretty different from saying 'cure' TBH

Only if you don't know what words mean.

"No" - none.

"Residual" - remaining after the greater part or quantity has gone.

It looks so you understand what words mean, just as much as they understand what ASD means. TBH.

Oh thank you so much that's a great help 🙄

I think you Misunderstand me. To use the word 'cure' suggests that it is a deliberate and active thing. Please see below the definition.

It changes the whole implication of what has been said.

relieve (a person or animal) of the symptoms of a disease or condition.

You're welcome 😊

That's nuts. I thought this was just an outlier nutty claim made by some siren presenters. But there it is in b&w.

Would someone who's on top of all the acronyms mind spelling out exactly who the document is by and the context in which it was written? Some confusion earlier in the thread and it would be good to have it all set out so can be referred to accurately.

Skyliner, ASD is only diagnosed from symptoms.

If the symptoms disappear there is no longer a diagnosis.

A ‘cure’ does not need to be intentional.

The suggestion from GIRES is particularly irresponsible because they do not provide evidence or elaborate on what they mean.

If they have made this claim in this document, it’s likely that they have made it elsewhere.

@Thelnebriati

If the document making this claim is online someone needs to archive it asap.

Good call. The tweet questioning GIRES: archive.li/5zxCk The reply mentioning the charity commission: archive.li/VSRrJ

The NHS standard contract: www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/gender-development-service-children-adolescents.pdf
Archive: archive.li/sOOVW

GIRES's reply claiming that transition cures autism on page 8: drive.google.com/file/d/0B7n9HajupVrLSzdzVEhvaEVhZmRBNzVXMkMxdlZlZlV4SGFv/view?pref=2&pli=1
Archive: archive.li/eXuIz

What a load of complete bollocks

Would someone who's on top of all the acronyms mind spelling out exactly who the document is by and the context in which it was written?

GIDS is the Gender Identity Development Service, the clinic commissioned by the NHS to cater for children and adolescents with gender identity difficulties. The contract between the NHS and GIDS includes a service specification outlining the business need for the service, objectives, context, scope of services, what the services will actually look like and how performance of the contract will be monitored.

From a quick google, it looks like this is the final version of the NHS/GIDS contract in question, which can be found on the NHS GIDS page here.

The front end of the contract (which would include the money, actual date it was signed, etc) unsurprisingly isn't included here, but the service specification states that these services run from 1 April 2016.

The document tweeted by Nicky Clark that precipitated this thread was drafted by GIRES (Gender Identity Research and Education Society), a UK charity supporting trans and GNC people, in response to an NHS public consultation on the GIDS service specification in April 2016. GIRES' documents and their reference to the consultation can be found on their website here.

It may well be that Nicky genuinely assumed she was looking at an NHS document because it says NHS in the title, although it's unfortunate that she cropped the remainder of the title in her tweet to omit the next line that said "GIRES RESPONSE", because by leaving the GIRES letterhead on the document and removing these words, it suggests that the NHS contracted with GIRES to provide services, which wasn't the case.

The only text referring to ASD in the NHS Service Specification is:

1.2.4 Autistic spectrum disorder conditions (ASD):

There seems to be a higher prevalence of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) conditions in clinically referred, gender dysphoric adolescents than in the general adolescent population. Holt, Skagerberg & Dunsford (2014) found that 13.3% of referrals to the service in 2012 mentioned comorbid ASD (although this is likely to be an underestimate). This compares with 9.4% in the Dutch service; whereas in the Finnish service, 26% of adolescents were diagnosed to be on the autism spectrum (Kaltiala-Heino et al. 2015).

However, there are a number of studies listed in the bibliography at the end of the final GIDS service specification for anyone who wants to dig further into the underlying sources.

For anyone who's interested, these are Transgender Trend's comments on the same service specification, to provide some balance!

Its confusing - the paragraph on page 6 of the contract relating to Finland does not mention ASD.

Perhaps they are referring to a part of the Finnish study not mentioned in the NHS contract?

In Finland, more than three quarters of 49 adolescents who were assessed over a two year period in a gender identity service had needed/or currently needed specialist level child and adolescent psychiatric services due to psychiatric problems other than GD (Kaltiala-Heino et al. 2015). The authors identified five distinctive groups of young people and adolescents amongst 49 adolescents presenting at their service: Group A: Early onset with no significant psychopathology; Group B: Early onset with considerable psychopathological difficulties; Group C: Adolescent onset with no, or very few psychopathological or developmental difficulties; Group D: Adolescent onset with severe psychopathological and developmental difficulties; and Group E: Adolescent onset with identity confused development. This last group was the largest, consisting of young people who were bullied, isolated with few friends, not attending school or not leaving the house, and frequently self-harming; they had a strong conviction that gender reassignment would solve their psychosocial difficulties.