A UK forum is encouraging a desperate parent of a trans identified male to seek out DIY hormones, without consulting health care professionals, how is this dangerous advice legal?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

OP "If anyone could help me to understand, I would be extremely grateful. I just want my daughter to be alive and happy in her own skin as much as possible ."

Responses: "diy is reliable and safe, there are communities that will be able to help, and really all it is getting a blood test every now and then to check how low or high a couple numbers are and adjusting accordingly."

Full details here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1rw0bac/please_help_parent_to_a_16_year_old/

How is this even slightly legal? The pro anorexia sites were shut down right? The pro suicide?

Thank you for the clarification. It is complicated and there are multiple bracnhes so I am sorry if I misrepesented. To clarify:

"In the TRIAL study, half of the participants start puberty suppression treatment straight away, while the other half begin after 12 months. PATHWAYS CONNECT will include an equal number of young people from each of these two groups. It will also recruit a subgroup of young people who are not receiving puberty blockers, from PATHWAYS HORIZON INTENSIVE.
PATHWAYS CONNECT participants will have brain scans (magnetic resonance imaging, MRI) so that researchers can understand how the brain develops and whether it changes over time. To spot these changes, young people participating in both the PATHWAYS TRIAL and CONNECT will have the scans three times — at the start of the study, one year later, and again after two years.
Young people participating in both HORIZON INTENSIVE and CONNECT will take part in brain scans twice — at the start of the study and after two years.

What is the alternative to gender affirming medication? I don’t think there is strong evidence that psychological help works for gender dysphoria either.

Why is it men can have surgery on the NHS to look more feminine and women can have surgery on the NHS to look more masculine, but men can’t have free surgery to look more masculine and women can’t have surgery to look more feminine no matter how depressed they are when they look in the mirror?
Obviously you can do what you like privately, but why is the NHS only covering one set of surgery? Why has one set of people got to just get on with it and take antidepressants?
Why is taxpayers money involved in this at all?

There may not be an effective treatment.

This is a possibility.

If this is the case, then arguing we should be funding something that's not any more effective than doing nothing is problematic.

There the fallacy of "we must do something" which applies to many things but sometimes doing 'something' (whatever that may happen to be) is actually worse than doing nothing.

And we need to be careful here about what surgical and drug treatments can actually achieve. If it's not very much and therefore expensive and awful side effects then yes the 'Do nothing' approach may be better. ESPECIALLY when we are talking about children.

There is some evidence that around 80% (maybe more) of children who say they want to be the opposite sex grow out of it post puberty. That should be enough to stop any drugs being given to any of these children. They can be supported until they are adults and the few who persist post puberty can be treated as adults.

What evidence is there that psychological help doesn't work? At present it's very difficult for anyone to get this sort of help that isn't 100% affirming of their opposite sex identity. You can't examine whether or not a treatment works if you outlaw it from the start.

Sorry - I hiit send too soon!

www.kcl.ac.uk/research/pathways-study-connect

"In the TRIAL study, half of the participants start puberty suppression treatment straight away, while the other half begin after 12 months. PATHWAYS CONNECT will include an equal number of young people from each of these two groups. It will also recruit a subgroup of young people who are not receiving puberty blockers, from PATHWAYS HORIZON INTENSIVE."

"PATHWAYS CONNECT participants will have brain scans (magnetic resonance imaging, MRI) ... — at the start of the study, one year later, and again after two years."

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/assets/pathways/horizon/pathways-horizon-intensive-easy-read.pdf

The quesionnaire period seems to continue up to 5 years:

"Online questionnaires The young person and their parent/caregiver will be asked to complete questionnaires once a year, for up to 5 years. This means if they join the study early on, they will complete questionnaires 5 times in total. If they join later on, they will complete questionnaires 3 times in total. The questionnaires will ask about: - The young person’s emotions and behaviours - How they feel about their gender and body, and what stage of puberty they think they are at (young person only) - Their relationships with others (young person only) - Their daily life with friends, family, education and other activities "

"The young person will be asked to have a series of physical health measurements and scans, including: - Blood and urine samples - Height and weight - Blood pressure - Heart rate and heart activity Bone scans The young person will also be asked to have 2 types of bone scan, one to check how strong their bones are, and the other to check how their bones are growing. They will complete these measurements and scans 2 times in total- once when they start HORIZON INTENSIVE, and again 2-years later."

And just in case you were worried:

"They will be roughly ‘matched’ to the young people taking part in PATHWAYS TRIAL on things like birth-registered sex, age, Autism or ADHD traits"

Chidlren with autism are going to be macthed so having autism is no barrier to taking puberty blockers.

I will need to have another listen to the podcast.

It’s available because the NHS recognises gender dysphoria as a condition that requires treatment. As far as I know there is no condition where someone feels they should be more masculine or feminine AND the treatment is to change the body. If there was such a condition the NHS should help.

I personally wouldn’t mind if it required private treatment because I did everything privately anyway, but I recognise not everyone is as fortunate as me and able to afford private consultations and surgery. Should people be left in distress from dysphoria if they can’t afford treatment privately?

It’s available because the NHS recognises gender dysphoria as a condition that requires treatment. As far as I know there is no condition where someone feels they should be more masculine or feminine AND the treatment is to change the body.

Your second sentence directly contradicts the first. You said that your gender dysphoria was about wanting to look more feminine, so there is a condition where the treatment for this is to change the body - gender dysphoria.

Why should men get treatment on the NHS to look more feminine, but women can't? Why is a man who wants to look feminine able to get hair removal treatments on the NHS but a woman with PCOS can't?

Can you explain what you mean here by your social role (bearing in mind it's 2026 not 1926)?

At a minimum a study could assess patients who have taken wrong sex hormones today. What did they take? For how long? Are they still? What is their physical health like (with measures)? Their mental health? Their IQ? Are they holding down a job/relationship/integrated into society?

Not an RCT but very valuable to know this.

It wasn’t contradictory. I said there is no other condition than gender dysphoria where that is the treatment. That is the treatment for gender dysphoria and it isn’t available to people without dysphoria.

If another condition comes along where changing the body resolves distress I see no reason why that shouldn’t be available.

This isn’t a sex equality issue. Treatment for gender dysphoria is equally available for males and female. The fact it isn’t available to people without dysphoria isn’t discrimination.

I meant how I’m seen and treated by society

Not sure if you saw this thread @noblegiraffe but the puberty blocker trial is a long standing discussion eg

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5471426-streeting-declares-the-puberty-blocker-trial-safe?page=8&reply=150165664

Can you explain what the difference is exactly between someone's gender distress and another person's distress about their body?

Both could be the source of severe mental health issues. Yet, one gets free extreme body modifications under the NHS and the other does not.

Of course there are mental health conditions where someone is very distressed by their body. It falls under body dysmorphia. But you are right, there is no treatment where the NHS funds extreme body modifications as the treatment. Why is this? That is a fucking great question and I would expect that there is a very political answer to it .

Aren't you seen as not being a woman at all, but being a male person who has modified their body?

At present it's very difficult for anyone to get this sort of help that isn't 100% affirming of their opposite sex identity. You can't examine whether or not a treatment works if you outlaw it from the start.

Indeed, this sort of help may even be deemed ‘conversion therapy’.

So you've changed your body just so that other people see you and treat you differently?

There's nothing internal about your distress about your body, it's just about how other people treat you?

I'm actually flabbergasted that any doctor would give a patient treatment to modify their body when the aim of the treatment is for other people to treat that person differently.

There can be no guarantees about how other people treat you. If this was the aim, you have been failed by the medical professionals who have treated you. You should have been given psychological help you to accept your body and understand that the way other people see you and treat you is less important than accepting yourself.

We can never really know how we’re seen by others, but my experience now is different compared to before transition and I’m happy with how I’m seen and treated

Conversion therapy to get trans people to 'accept' the bodies we were born with doesn't work. It never has worked and it never will.

Gender Incongruence is a registered mental health condition under the NHS and the only treatment which can help relieve this is Medical Transition.

There are lots of women who suffer mental anguish and mental health problems due to their bodies. It can be from being deeply unhappy about their nose so they don't socialise because of a chronic lack of self confidence. It can be associated with weight (and notably weight gain after pregnancy). Or it can be to do with being distressed at the amount of unwanted attention they get because of the size of their boobs.

All these concerns are effectively recognised as 'a condition' known as anxiety. But because it hasn't got a particular title it doesn't get the same lobbying behind it.

And we could have a long argument about how endometriosis is a recognised condition but so many doctors don't give a fuck hundreds of not thousands of women are in pain for decades before actually getting any treatment which has a known clinically proven effectiveness. Also see doctors withholding HRT because they are pricks.

Arguably weight loss drugs for mental health reasons would have a very good case of evidence behind it to as a means to have a change of lifestyle and improved mental and physical health. But the idea on monjaro for mental health hasn't got a flag behind it.

People just have to get the fuck on without treatment or support in so many of these cases. The state of mental health care in the UK is utterly shocking across the board as it is.

But somehow there's shreks and wails about cross sex hormones and cosmetic surgery from political quarters but active tumbleweeds about less fashionable causes which don't get you woke points on Reddit, Bluesky, Twitter or whereever.

A friend of mine is a doctor and did have a breast reduction because it was causing her so much distress. She was refused it on the NHS. But I know of other people in different parts of the UK who have had it because their area funds it. If she had just claimed she was gender questioning she'd have probably got it for free.

And yes we absolutely should be having robust and difficult conversations about why unproven treatment is given a free pass when others which are no less legitimate are just shoved in the tray labelled 'cant be arsed, not going to get enough likes on socials'.

It then raises the question of whether the NHS should fund treatment if someone private botches it or there's complications too. This is known as a rising problem with cosmetic surgery done abroad and the NHS picking up the tab.

You are so disingenuous. You know very well I spoke about distress with my body and being happier and more comfortable after the changes earlier in the thread. I took hormone replacement to align my body closer with how I felt it should look, AND in doing so how I’m seen and treated has changed. Being treated differently happens as an effect of bodily changes which is the main goal of treatment.

For trans people on the NHS there are few things we actually get. As a transsexual woman I got Sex Reassignment Surgery, Hormones and a few sessions of laser. That's it.

If I want anything else I pay for it.

The NHS funds this as it works in relieving the negative mental health impacts of living with gender incongruence.

Dish out them fatjabs!

That's it?!

Fucking hell that's a LOT!

It’s body dysmorphia. Where people are so distressed by their body they commit suicide.
There is no surgical treatment for that, and they would argue that surgery and medical interventions would fix everything, much like gender dysphoria.
Why can they not have what they want?