Mysterious drop in GIDS Waiting List…

[NitroNine]

From TwiX (name of newspaper not given):

Waiting list Sizeable drop
During the last 18 months, staff have been baffled by what appears to be a drop in the numbers on the waiting list.
After the announcement was made in 2022 that Gids would close, there were about 7,000 people on the waiting list, but the current figure being cited is 5,000 - a reduction of 2,000 patients in a period in which, clinicians said, no patients were removed from the list to be seen by staff, but more would have been added.
At the point the list was given to NHS
Arden and GEM in November 2022, there were around 300 new referrals per month, staff said, so if that continued there would now be about 10,000 on the waiting list.
Yet it stands at half of that. Some of these will be 17-year-olds who were moved to the adult waiting list, but this, staff said, would not explain all of that potentially 5,000 drop.
NHS England said only those over 17, any duplicate names or those who asked to be were taken off the list.

Truly a mystery 🤔

I don't understand what is being implied here - can you explain?

Sweden saw something similar IIRC - when trans related media was all very positive the waiting list surged and when the ‘Trans Train’ documentary aired and the negative impact of medical interventions for gender reasons became part of the national conversation, the referrals dropped off again.

I expect that stopping referrals from non-medical professionals (eg for a while GIDS was accepting referrals from Mermaids, schools and Rainbow youth groups) has made a massive impact too.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35107572/

A mixture of teens desisting and no longer wanting appointments plus Referrals having to come from a medical professional not a well meaning youth worker.

Presumably as well, when parents were being peddled ‘better a trans child than a dead child’ and being told everything would be light and rainbows, they would push for referral. Seeing media reports on potential side effects of puberty blockers etc will probably be causing more parents to exercise caution?

I’ve been saying that trans just isn’t as fashionable amongst (girl) teens as it was 5 years ago for some time now (observed via my own children’s friends groups) but trans activists don’t want to believe it.

TRAs love to chuck out that left handedness graph and say that social acceptance is the reason for both trans identity and left handedness to rise, but they never acknowledge that the left handedness graph levels off and the percentage of left handed people has remained pretty samey for decades, whereas the numbers of teen’s identifying as trans spiked but there is no evidence that it will level off at the high point.

My hypothesis is that the spike will fall away, it won’t go right back down to 1990s levels but will instead hover around early 2010s, following a pattern more like bulimia than left handedness.

Yes I imagine that a lot of parents aren't so keen anymore now it's clearer what service is on offer.

My daughter was put on the waiting list. I didn't really want it but we were told the waiting list was years and I agreed for her mental health at the time.
Recently though with the closure of the place (I've forgotten the name - Portland was it?) we were sent a letter asking if we wanted to transfer to different lists. If you didn't return the form you drop off the list.
I threw the letter away.
My daughter is not trans. She never was. It was - in all honesty - just a phase of discovering her personality.

Yep, lots of parents of gender distressed teens have avoided an NHS referral (perhaps seeking private psychological support if they had the means) and their child has since desisted.

We’ll probably never know the true extent of the social contagion - I wish schools had been required to complete a census type survey. Could’ve kept all kids anonymous and just tracked the numbers.

So glad your daughter is doing ok, @Needmorelego - IME gender rumination amongst teens is a time wasting, self esteem destroying cul de sac. I’m glad it’s losing it’s hold on the youth.

Thanks @KellieJaysLapdog . She's doing fine - and hasn't mentioned any idea of transitioning for a few years now.
She is who she is and I am actually thankful the waiting list was so long that she never actually got seen.

I think it’s lost it’s allure, and also it’s capacity to cause a panicked reaction in carers. If I was put in the position I was in 6 years ago, I’d be much more prepared to probe and explore the contradictions of a really very young and traumatised girl who’d never even spoken to boys, deciding she was one. Feel so sorry for those young adults who may now feel trapped in a hastily adopted persona. Quite prepared to accept that there may be happy trans people out there. I hope that is most of them, I don’t wish unhappiness on people.

I think the implication is that if the waiting list is shrinking dispite the fact that new people are being added and no-one is being seen the feelings of distress are tending to resolve and pass in thousands of girls as they grow up.

The maths is rough of course as the data is limited but the waiting list being 5,000 poeple when it 'should' be 10,000 would indeed be pretty significant.

The waiting lists for CAMHS continues to grow and the number of young people struggling with their mental health has never been higher.

I think the significant rise in young people claiming to have trans identities has led to professionals not feeling the need to make referrals to GIDS, except in cases where there is significant dysphoria. They feel more able to deal with lower level issues themselves.

I expect Keira Bell’s evidence to court and Susie Green’s spectacular, high profile fall from grace (from regular Lorraine/This Morning appearances to being shoved out of the child sex change charity she ran) have also had an effect on the referral numbers.

Glad to hear CAMHS now feel more able to support children with comorbid gender distress rather than than refer straight on (presume the old NHS England pathway expected referral?)

I hope it doesn't mean they've all headed straight for the Wild West of GenderGP and the like, with even fewer safeguards.

Sorry @RoyalCorgi - hope responses in thread have covered it, wasn’t meaning to leave you hanging!

@Needmorelego am so glad to hear your daughter’s doing so much better: being a teenage girl is fecking awful, frankly: who can blame girls for wanting to opt out of it? (Absolutely blame the adults who tell them that it’s possible to do so though!)

I hope not! GenderGP seems to be imploding of late so I don’t think it’ll be an option for much longer.

No doubt some other dubious outfit will rise from it’s ashes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderGP/

It's Patrick Strudwick and YMMV as to whether he's an informed narrator.

https://inews.co.uk/news/nhs-gender-clinic-young-people-understaffed-not-ready-2982002?

It could be that the orginal figure of 7,000 was never reviewed? Maybe they never checked for duplicates, or asked if they wanted to stay on the list previously. But as part of the move to new clinics, did.

Children and parents might have wanted the referral for access to PB, and because its clear that isnt a guarantee any more, went somewhere else? Also, if the waiting is known to be long, people would find private clinics just to be seen.

Do you mean at the outset rather than this point where they've de-duplicated etc?

Who knows. It certainly looks like there's a need for more assurance and reassurance about the quality of the data.

However, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that GIDS' data isn't reliable, given their other poor record-keeping.

I checked in with my young teenage son if 'gender' had been raised at school recently - he breezily said "Oh that - no, none of us believe in it Mum, don't worry!"

The newspapers seems to be suggesting the waiting list was never as long as the Tavi was suggesting in the first place. Is it normal to have duplicate names on a NHS waiting list??

Thank you for tracking it down @RethinkingLife 🙂

I’d not be astonished if it turned out the Tavistock’s record-keeping for the GIDS list wasn’t meticulous. I mean, we know their other records & general, well, everything, = a shitshow.

Am wondering if the HSE removing all the Irish patients made a significant dent in the list 🤔

There is a concept in economics, and indeed in healthcare economics, called Supplier Induced Demand. In healthcare economics the idea is that the supplier artificially stimulates demand from patients (ie beyond what the Pareto Effect would normally arrive at) by exploiting an information gap - the healthcare supplier has superior information and therefore induces the patient to demand treatment that is excessively invasive and/or beyond what the patient would normally request had the patient had access to all the relevant information about the treatment.

If we look at the falsely optimistic and sunny promises that were being made by healthcare providers at the start of the trans trend (puberty blockers are reversible, invasive and extreme surgeries and simple and can be easily recovered from, it is possible to 'pass' through taking cross sex hormones with no deleterious side effects), I would suggest that we see a clear example of Supplier Induced Demand in motion.

Or to put it another way, vulnerable young people have been defrauded and experimented upon by unscrupulous healthcare snake oil salesmen who deliberately withheld the true, dreadful cost of these 'treatments' in order to induce demand.