GIDD:5,500 on waiting list after post-lockdown 'surge' in demand

[ResisterRex]

In the Mail, with connections being made to being online more:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10631603/Gender-swap-NHS-waiting-list-children-stands-5-500.html

"The number of children lining up for gender-change treatment on the NHS has soared by more than a fifth since the Covid lockdowns, The Mail on Sunday can reveal."

"Last night, Stephanie Davies-Arai founder of campaign group Transgender Trend said of the possible impact of lockdowns: 'Life stopped really, so adolescents at that stage in their lives, where they're really searching for their identity, turn online.
'They're bombarded with messages about being trans and that all of their problems and insecurities and anxieties are because they're trans.'"

"The new figure of 5,500 is a massive increase on an estimate of the waiting list made last year.
In January 2021, the Care Quality Commission reported after inspecting GIDS that the list was 4,600."

The Cass Review is mentioned. And this

"Just 138 children were referred for treatment in 2010/11. That had grown to 2,383 in 2020/21, a 17-fold increase.
At the start of the 2010s, the majority of children referred for treatment were male-born, but female-born patients now make up most of the caseload.
Reasons for that shift are not known, but some experts say that it is part of a wider mental health crisis among British girls, who are more likely to report anxiety, depression and self-harm than boys."

At least 2 boys in in my eldest's year returned to school in 2020 as transgirls. I knew one of them reasonably well. On the first day back in Sept 2020, my ds came home from school and said '[boysname] has come back to school as [girlsname]' which made me feel really sad.

What a perfect opportunity for people wanting to push this (or any other) ideology Lockdown was. Anxious and lonely, isolated teenagers feeling unsettled would be easy pickings for anyone wanting to present a reason for those feelings (other than the obvious pandemic worries) and then a solution. I am not at all surprised by this surge in demand.

I agree. I can see why the first lockdown happened but I do wonder how the subsequent ones will be viewed wrt children and the effect on them.

The other side to lockdowns was that parents had more time to look at what was being taught. I looked very closely into this as I had more time since commuting was removed from my week.

One worry about the long waiting lists is that parents might turn to unregulated services like GenderGP.

On another thread a poster has said It's quite scary the number of private prescriptions I've seen from Romania for puberty blockers

GenderGP employ a Romanian doctor to write their prescriptions now that neither of the Webberleys are allowed to practise in the UK.

@OldCrone

One worry about the long waiting lists is that parents might turn to unregulated services like GenderGP.

On another thread a poster has said It's quite scary the number of private prescriptions I've seen from Romania for puberty blockers

GenderGP employ a Romanian doctor to write their prescriptions now that neither of the Webberleys are allowed to practise in the UK.

Good Lord

This is also interesting Rex because I have seen posters in the past post a graph which supposedly showed the referrals levelling off as a 'gotcha'. The 'gotcha' supposedly was that if there really was an 'issue' with our daughters and this not being driven by them merely 'coming out' the increase would have been sustained.

Those posters never once returned to answer why they thought that with lock down and no one getting to actually see Drs etc for referrals that they would expect a true number of referrals for those years. They simply cannot accept there is an issue and it needs to be thoroughly researched and should have been researched right from the time clinicians first started to say.... we have a problem.

@OldCrone

One worry about the long waiting lists is that parents might turn to unregulated services like GenderGP.

On another thread a poster has said It's quite scary the number of private prescriptions I've seen from Romania for puberty blockers

GenderGP employ a Romanian doctor to write their prescriptions now that neither of the Webberleys are allowed to practise in the UK.

And the children could do it themselves through crowdfunders: the teenage gamer in a glowing piece in the Guardian last year seems to have obtained hormones online without parental knowledge and was, at the time of publication, raising funding online for what the Guardian coyly terms 'bottom surgery'.

The role of the crowdfunding sites in all this really needs more scrutiny too.

Good points about numbers supposedly levelling off (hence quality, scrutinised data is so important), and the role of crowdfunding sites. Both these points go to the heart of the matter - the affirmation model.

The ethics of the affirmation model should be looked at. So too, should the drivers behind the decisions made by organisations that adopt it. Organisations like charities, local authorities, schools, central government...the list goes on.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life should - arguably - be looking at these things:

Committee on Standards in Public Life: review on the role of leadership in embedding the Principl... www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4508402-committee-on-standards-in-public-life-review-on-the-role-of-leadership-in-embedding-the-principles-of-public-life-in-public-sector-organisations

It's definitely not social contagion or a craze though sarcasm

That's just nhs waiting lists, is there data for private ones? Is it dropping as more go private? How does the referral rate align with population growth? Is it like 10% of 10 is 1, 10% of 100 is 10, so while it's a 10x increase, it would remain 10%.

This needs urgent research. There should be no further diagnoses until there is objective research.

My first thought on reading the article was that an increased waiting list doesn't necessarily mean an increase in referrals. It could be due to other factors, e.g. a reduction in the number of patients being seen or a delay in discharging patients.

I was also optimistic that we had got over the referral peak as there was a reduction in the number of referrals for the year 2020 -2021.The previous peak had been in 2019-2020 when the number of referrals was 2748

However I found that the numbers are still increasing dramatically. Approximately 1100 children with gender identity difficulties were referred in each of Q1 and Q2 for this year (2021-2022). This dropped to about 700 in Q3 due to a change in the referral process. Some children now seem to be 'weeded out' and the referral is rejected at this initial stage. Those children are presumably seen elsewhere for their GI problems?

Assuming the rate remains the same for Q4, the total number of children referred this year will be over 3500.

If the referral process had not changed it would be more like 4500 this year, more than a 60% increase on the previous peak!

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/governance/board-of-directors/meetings/

There's a similar article in the Telegraph today:

www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/03/21/comes-gender-identity-whatever-happened-common-sense/

"According to a new report, 5,500 children are now on an NHS waiting list for gender swap treatment at the Tavistock and Portman Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in London, after a “surge in demand”.
To give you some idea of how massive this surge has been, I’m going to provide a few more statistics: just 138 children were referred to GIDS for treatment in 2010/11, and that number had grown to 2,383 in 2020/21, a 17-fold increase.
What could possibly have happened between then and now to explain thousands of British children not simply questioning their gender, but actively signing up to a clinic offering advice, yes, but also life-changing sex-change treatments?
This is where the common sense part comes in – or what was originally called “common judgment” back when the phrase was first coined in the 14th century. The same common sense that had people declaring “RIP women’s sport” just last week, when images of the six-foot transgender swimmer Lia Thomas brandishing her 500-yard freestyle trophyy_ on a podium at the NCAA Swimming championship in Atlanta made the news.
Could the surge in demand for help and treatment possibly be linked to a global pandemic and the three lockdowns that left vulnerable youngsters imprisoned, isolated and glued to their screens? By January 2021, a report compiled by the Care Quality Commission showed that the waiting list had already reached 4,600. On Sunday night, Stephanie Davies-Araii_, founder of campaign group Transgender Trend, explained that during those lockdowns, “life stopped, really – so adolescents at that stage in their lives, where they’re really searching for their identity, turn online”.
We know that the legacy of those lockdowns has been a mental health crisis across all ages, but particularly in the young and particularly in girls, who incidentally now make up most of the Tavistock’ss_ caseload. Coincidence? Common sense would tell us otherwise. Because we also know that the online platforms adolescents turned to have overwhelmingly been pushing the same narrative. If you are uncomfortable in your skin, if you are anxious and insecure and distressed and flailing, then it may be because you are stuck in the wrong body."

Could the surge in demand for help and treatment possibly be linked to a global pandemic and the three lockdowns that left vulnerable youngsters imprisoned, isolated and glued to their screens?

This doesn't really stand up as an explanation. The massive increase in numbers had already started at least 5 years before the pandemic.

Agree @OldCrone. But unfettered access to social media by children didn't. That's the bit I'd like more information about.