Finnish study on transition and psychiatric outcomes in sex and gender shows increased psychiatric morbidity

[anyolddinosaur]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.70533 Finnish study shows transition did not help psychiatric morbidity. It got worse.

As I have said a few times previously, no one's life is made better by being incontinent.

One of the complications of genital surgery is incontinence... and that is just one way a person's life could be made substantially worse.

The Equality Act stops you suffering detriment because of your PC - not gaining access to something that harms you does not cause you to suffer detriment.

Incidentally re Speech and Language Therapy, extreme autism advocates criticise anything they feel undermine your autistic identify - ABA therapy being the main target but some also extend this to speech and language therapy.

That's amazing. I heard it in the voice of Derek Zoolander.

Science absolutely does care about results - publication bias against negative results or adverse effects in the treatment group has been well known for a long time. I remember a friend was involved in a huge gold standard RCT for a popular and cheap treatment - it was found that the treatment had no impact. They struggled to get anywhere to publish it; journals just weren’t interested.

These are shocking numbers. A medical scandal and a genuine horror. Gender medicine, as practised on minors and young adults is a crime against humanity. I disagree with others who defend Tavistock as sloppy. To me it's clear that they they could see the deterioration of mental health in their treated patients, 60% is impossible to miss, and the failure in tracking was an effort (successful) at plausible deniability.

ABA is torture and child abuse and anyone who practices it belongs in jail.
From an aba victim.

Oh gosh.

'Updates from the Gender Services Clinical Programme

...

NHS England Data Linkage Study – Understanding the Needs and Healthcare Experience of Former Tavistock GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) Patients

The data linkage study aims to improve our understanding of the needs and experience of up to 9,000 individuals who, as children, were seen by the former Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

The study design does not involve patients directly, but instead – with a number of important safeguards in place – links and analyses data for former GIDS patients for whom digital records are available.

Individual patients will not be contacted to discuss their views or experiences, and people will be able to opt out of the study. However we are keen to make contact with people who were referred or seen by the GIDS service and would be happy to be part of a virtual lived experience advisory group to help shape and guide how the study works.

Some aspects of the study are fixed and will not be subject to consultation, but wherever possible we want to involve people to make sure we understand aspects of care received, take patient concerns into account, and explain things clearly and sensitively.

Who can get involved?

If you were a former GIDS patient, referred to or seen at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust from, or after, 2009 then your data will be considered as part of this study and we are keen to hear from you.

What’s the commitment?

We are committed to making involvement as flexible as possible – these are not formal committee-style roles. This could mean joining group discussions, but if preferred we can arrange one to one discussions, or you may even choose to give written feedback by email. You can let us know how you prefer to be involved, and your involvement will remain confidential.'

Because they see the scandal unfolding and the entire house of cards starting to slip.

The myth of the 'trans child' is an important part of the canon. Why we got fed relentless propaganda like 'butterfly' and 'I am Jazz'. Mermaids, GIDS, and LGBTYS bolstered it all and continue to try to stop the dam from bursting despite endlessly piling up evidence of abuse and careless mistreatment.

As the horror of the rainbow bullshit comes apart we can expect to see panic and hyperbole ramp up yet again. Although they've already played the ludicrously offensive 'genocide' card, so there's not really anywhere else to go.

Once again, though, being proven right isn't a joyful thing. Its a slowly unfolding tragedy that has irrevocably harmed many thousands of vulnerable children.

There are no happy endings, I'm afraid. It's all utterly grim, and those involved should be deeply ashamed for what theyve done. I suppose at least maybe we can start to look at why so many children are struggling and try to find effective ways to help and support.

🤣 There are just so many funny touches. I love the pie chart having 2 people in both the 1/3 section and the 2/3 section. I love the reference to ‘as many as 2/3’ not having received gender care when it was 7/8. Dame Katy Denise couldn’t have produced anything funnier!

Here is an update from Professor Kaltiala. Bernard Lane who has been excellent on reporting on these issues for a few years now, asked her directly about the accusation about the article linked up thread.

He reports:

UPDATE | The researchers acknowledged the limitation that their study could not analyse in detail why these patients needed psychiatric services.

Asked about this issue, Professor Kaltiala told GCN that healthcare register data used for the study included diagnoses and in-patient periods but not treatment nor information about a patient’s problems related to family life, romantic relationships or work.

One transgender journalist’s critique of the new study suggests that psychiatric appointments are part and parcel of the gender-transition process in Finland and therefore may not point to serious psychiatric morbidity.

However, Professor Kaltiala said the young people seen by specialised psychiatric services in her country would have “severe disorders”. These services were focused on “those really in need”, consistent with national criteria for health equity.

“In Finland, you do not get admitted to specialist-level services if you don’t have mental disorders at all or [have only] mild disorders and problems,” she said. “Primary-level services are available for needs related to milder disorders and psychosocial difficulties.”

She said the gender-referred youth in the new study were much more likely than matched controls to have a history of severe mental disorders, often dating back some years before they reached the gender clinic.

“Thus, many developed feelings of gender dysphoria in the context of severe disorders,” she said.

“Severe mental disorders during adolescence generally have potential to complicate identity development. It rather seems that feelings of gender dysphoria are sometimes secondary to severe mental disorders.”

If it were the other way around, and the mental disorders were secondary to the dysphoria, those disorders would be “expected to subside with medical gender reassignment”, according to the Dutch treatment protocol adopted internationally, she said.

But this did not happen in the new Finnish study.

Instead, the need for specialist psychiatric services—and therefore the scale of serious mental disorders—increased after medical transition, as the study by Professor Kaltiala and her colleagues reported.

Here is the link to the full article

https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/transition-blues?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Here is a link to his tweet which included the update.

https://x.com/bernard_lane/status/2041664718096756867?s=46

Maybe, people who consider themselves reputable journos should seek clarification directly from the authors as Bernard did. The Prof seems approachable and willing to make timely clarifications. If in doubt, ask is generally a good policy.

The first criticsim of the study was that it inluded routine assessments needed to show gender dysphoria. It didnt. Therefore those critical of the study apparently didnt bother to read it before writing their "criticism".

Second criticism over timing. Lets consider for a moment who would have got through their assessments most rapidly. Would they be the people with the most severe comorbidity - unlikely. Would they be the people most confident that they wanted to proceed - quite possibly. So you are maybe finding that those with the least psychiatric comorbidity and most committed to changing gender experienced more psychiatric illness post treatment.

Have I missed something?

People who want to discredit with misinformation aren’t interested in genuine clarifications.

Men who threaten sexual violence and assault using splintery rolling pins should seek psychiatric help immediately. It's a shame their parents didn't intervene and get them that much needed help years ago when they started to exhibit such violent tendencies.

Such men should probably be included in future studies. The findings would be predictable.

Therefore those critical of the study apparently didnt bother to read it before writing their "criticism".

Where have we seen that before? 🤔 Oh yes, pretty much anywhere the evidence disagrees with their position. Cass was a major one - even politicians were raising false issues presented to them by activist. Plus of course FWS, and GLP’s recent loss.

This is doing the rounds. A brief scan of it and I think it is highly repetitive (AI?) and seems to be tautological.

Its arguments seem specious and are putting the cart before the horse. Body dismorphia is the SYMPTOM of psychiatric distress.

Looking for a non distressed teen with body dismorphia is like looking for a unicorn. Most of the criticisms have been addressed by the Finnish team.

Anyone care to take it apart argument by argument? Apparently this is the work we still have to do. The exercise does serve the purpose of making the unfamiliar familiar. The TRA strategy has at least evolved into produce guff with sciency-sounding terms to bamboozle the kids into saying here is 12 arguments as to why the study sucks but don’t study them too deeply.

Oh yes and a bonus ad hominem of GCs are dullards.

Attempt to highlight methodological flaws in Finnish Study

The TRA strategy has at least evolved into produce guff with sciency-sounding terms to bamboozle the kids into saying here is 12 arguments as to why the study sucks but don’t study them too deeply.

You mean they have refined their AI prompts but still not read the study.

One would hope the NHS and UK.gov would not set much store in ChatAGP arguments posted on Twitter.

ChatAGP 😀

I've been arguing with people on twitter about this for hours and every time they eventually reveal they haven't even read the study properly. Claims that the increased visits are due to GD check ups or for talking therapy. One person even claimed that the psychiatric clinic visits increase is because treatment is working so they get more of it. They had no concept that its usual for appointments to decrease when you are stable/improving and increase when worsenening, or that public health systems aren't going to give unnecessary expensive appointments to healthy people.

Oh I do muddle up the letters ... 😄

Yep, we're seeing the death rattles and dying gasps of the Trans Ideology cult. Those on this thread with a reason to desperately cling on to the end to justify what they did to themselves know the gig is up, and they know this study is unimpeachable. They know we see through their pitiful desperate attempts to discredit it. But they cannot argue against it with any facts or data. They are fucked, basically. And they know it. The truth was always going to come out eventually, even they knew this.

Any good study will have a 'limitations' section. This one does, and discussions around the limitations are entirely valid. However, imho, what is of greater importance is how this is going to land with politicians.
The diehard genderists will look to the activists to give them sound-bite 'refutations'. However, any fence-sitting politician who achieved functional numeracy in school is going to look at the percentages in the Finnish report and think - wtaf!?

Our job is to get those percentages in front of our representatives.

Hm. Often 'what they did.to themselves' means little more than 'wore make up and short skirts'. They may have made a fool of themselves and have often damaged the wellbeing of those around them, but men who just grew their hair out have lost very little.

It's the teenage girls who may have irreversibly damaged their bodies and possibly threatened their long term health, as well as sterilising themselves, created all the serious and difficult consequences of cross sex hormone use and unnecesssary surgeries that are the ones who have lost most. All the vulnerable, confused and damaged children who had comorbidities untreated and problems not only ignored but actually reified. I can only imagine how their physical and mental health has been affected and the long term consequences.

I hope the NHS will give some consideration to how they are going to.support these people going forward, because they are to a large extent culpable for harms done.

Agree, but I still have a problem with the timing.

Suppose all the morbidity exhibited by the GR+ group occurred before, during, and just after the actual treatment period, after which the subjects enjoyed psychiatric plain sailing for many decades? That would look like a treatment failure, but could be corrected for by somehow incorporating (actual date of morbidity) into the study.

I also have a problem with outcomes generally. Suppose GR+ group do indeed suffer terrible outcomes, but it would have been even worse if they didn't have the GR? The way to address this is to compare GR+ with GR- but with matching for morbidity at index date. I suspect though that the numbers of (high initial morbidity GR+) and (low initial morbidity GR-) might be too low to achieve significance.

The obvious solution is a quasi-longitudinal study. Stop GAC and give psychological support only, for the next ten years, then crunch all the data for the previous forty years again. But I would say that, wouldn't I?😏

Yes.

This reminds me of Polly Carmichael’s argument for the discrepancy between the high conversion rate from puberty blocker to cross sex hormones compared to cross sex hormone use amongst those not prescribed PBs. She claimed it evidenced their skill at determining who should take blockers.

What is disappointing, but perhaps inevitable on social media, is the partisan way the study is received. Many of those who have serious concerns about the harms of gender affirming care (GAC) are responding to it as though the interpretation of findings are facts. Those who think GAC is beneficial are simply wanting to denigrate the study and dismiss its relevance.