A critical subset of medical practitioners ( child and adolescent psychiatrists, paediatricians, paediatric endocrinologists) inexplicably totally captured by the dominant subset of “ Health Professionals “, viz., social scientists./ psychologists. What better example of the woke being prepared to “fight harder, and to take no prisoners “?
These activists have been able to capture the relevant medical colleges, the regulatory body AHPRA, and the ( lay, so somewhat excused) legislators. Whenever this nightmare unravels, the social costs ( to so many young folk) and the processional medical reputational costs will be beyond estimate.
This nonsense is the antithesis of science and common sense It is a corruption of the ethics and ideals of the disciplines that should be held sacred in medicine.
As I have stated previously in this forum:
Virtually every principle enshrined in medical practice to ensure safety and efficacy has been ignored in the field of gender medicine.
Children diagnosed with GD are offered off-label hormones as a precursor to irreversible genital mutilation and sterilisation.
Normal circumstance would demand an immediate cessation of such an invasive process pending confirmation of positive outcome via an appropriate clinical trial.
Not so! The absurd notion that changing girls into boys and boys into girls is lifesaving thereby sidelining scrutiny in the rush ‘get it done and save a life’.
We have ventured into a brave new world where the rules don’t hold and its pioneers are applauded as brave and noble.
I suspect few hospital administrators know that these treatments are justified as routine on the basis of recommendations from AusPATH, WPATH and its other emanations.
This account accurately reflects my experience attending the AusPATH Conference in 2019: a melange of pseudo-science masquerading as research, shared among an unquestioning group of ideologues. I had attended as an observer to deepen my knowledge of the trans phenomenon, as I work to support schools managing the needs of trans children, but I was refused membership of AusPATH because my unquestioning acceptance of the affirmation model could not be guaranteed. So much for an open and objective search for truth.
BTW I did learn how deeply the affirmation model leans on Critical Psychology - a clinical misuse of an otherwise important epistemic theory. When I realised that this is the intellectual foundation of the trans narrative, I came to believe that the whole trans edifice has no solid foundation.
Bernard, you did well to get hold of this article. Not many surprises to me, though maybe many for the general public. One surprise for me was the perception that governments are hostile to the transing movement, I thought Aussie federal and state governments were very much in support.
Bill, I think this contradiction reflects the absolutist nature of trans demands. Given 4/5th of what they want, they are enraged by the denial of the final 1/5th. It is a worldview in which everyone else is supposedly seeking their erasure, their genocide. And yet when asked if there's anything odd about exponential increases in gender clinic caseloads, they say 'nothing to worry about it', this surge in patient numbers reflects a more understanding & accepting society.
And big thanks to the author for giving up her precious time and for sharing this. I hope the emotional labour involved didn't cause her to resort to the beanbag room at any point.
I often wonder this. If your commitment is to queering and transgression and to the prioritisation of identitarian viewpoints over solid scholarship then anything really does go. Everything has validity within its own framework and is worthy of consideration. By these measures science, medicine and evidence based procedures are only as important as the "newly emerging field of trans epistemology". No wonder transactivism is a form of bullying when the only rational explanation for much of what happens at the Auspath conference and in the development of guidelines (Bernard's recent article about my analysis of the PATHA) is 'because we say so'. At the recent Genspect webinar this was described as a scientistic, rather than a scientific view by Simon Tegg in a piece of insightful analysis of the way New Zealand's 11* higher rate than the UK is portrayed not as a scandal but as responding to a need.
I would like to know more about this 48% survey. Adam Bandt (Greens leader) mentions this on his website. 48% will suicide if they don't transition etc. I found this since posting. https://www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/
It’s a boldfaced lie, basically. Prof Michael Biggs looked at all the available evidence and found the actual rate is 0.03% or 1 teen suicide per 3,300 teen patients. It would be hard to argue this is higher than a comparable population with equivalent mental health problems who don’t identify as trans. I can link to the study when I get home if you like.
Yep. Meanwhile, all of the available objective evidence shows that suicide attempts increase after transition, which contradicts the "life-saving" claim.
The only 2 long-term followup studies show that actual suicide rates increase after transitioning:
This short-term followup (2 years) illustrates the hazards of relying on self-assessments. The transitioning kids SAID they had fewer suicidal thoughts, but their rate of ACTUAL suicides jumped:
This retrospective study of 9 years of US military family healthcare data shows that kids showed no decrease in mental health care utilization, and were prescribed psychotropic meds more often after transition than before:
Quasi-statistical claims about suicide are rife with shaky data and logical fallacies. For example, what does it mean 'that suicide attempts increase after transition'? What is the comparison population? People who haven't transitioned? Meaning, the general population, the rest of us? Not exactly a meaningful comparison. We should routinely expect that a tiny subset of people who have been extensively medicalized and subjected to psychotherapy will have a higher suicide rate, regardless of specific medical treatment.
Likewise we should expect that kids who have been in the mental-hygiene mill (the last study you link) for whatever reason will be using psychotherapy and 'psychotropic meds' at a higher rate than their siblings.
Moreover, the 'after transition' cohorts in those Swedish and Danish statistics, and the gender-affirmation youngsters in the last study, do not consist entirely of people who had 'transitioned', rather they were simply people who were considered to have a 'transgender identity' because they had been patients at the clinics. In all likelihood the vast majority of them never actually changed their sex, and therefore should not be counted as post-transitioners.
You clearly are not a scientist, don't understand statistics and didn't read/understand the linked studies.
"Suicide attempts increase after transition" means that the rate of suicide attempts increase after transition.
Face it, medicalization is not the "life-saving" treatment for dysphoria that its proponents falsely claim. It's an act of iatrogenic harm, leading to a lifetime of increasing medicalization for multiplying health and mental problems and premature death.
You can leave your personal remarks at the door. Obviously I couldn't have critiqued the studies in detail if I hadn't seen them at least once.
The Danish study compares those with 'transgender identity' (meaning those who had once registered with a clinic) with the general population. The Swedish study compares post-srs psychiatric patients with the general population. The 'US military family data' study compares kids who've had long-term psychotherapy to their non-therapied siblings. None of these was a properly controlled study where you compare two populations, like-with-like.
Of COURSE people who've been in the psychiatric mill are more likely to be getting therapy and meds now, or be in a distressed state. David Foster Wallace, Jerzy Kosinski, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath all committed suicide. Are we going to blame this on their clinical treatment? Or might it have something to do with being a creative writer? Or—just a guess—something unrelated to both?
The high prevalence of mental health disorders in the gender dysphoria cohort has been well documented. One study (of many) in the journal ‘Transgender Health’ titled ‘Mental Health Diagnoses Among Transgender Patients in the Clinical Setting’
Stated:
Of 10,270 transgender patients identified, 58% (n=5940) had at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared with 13.6% (n=7,311,780) in the control patient population (p<0.0005)
The data suggests that gender dysphoria is indeed a mental health condition and that self-harming, suicidal ideation and other dramatics are commonly related to mental health disorders.
The sobering reality is that I can not find a single record case of suicide related to gender dysphoria in Australia.
In reality the ‘48%’ claim is in all likelihood an exaggeration of feature of a cohort with severe mental health disorders as are found in those with gender dysphoria.
Actually your cited data suggest merely that people seeking psychotherapy will have more than one problem in their lives, and more than one simple diagnosis. These things come in clusters. I've never seen a psychiatric diagnosis that went, "Has bipolar disorder, nothing else."
As for the '48%' claim, it's from what Bernard Lane calls a low-quality survey (in his linked story, above) with a grand total of 27 respondents self-identifying with a 'trans' identity. But that 'trans' identification is loose and nebulous since it can include all manner of things. End of the day, it is meaningless.
Your first paragraph is making the same point he made. One mental illness tends to lead to another/"cluster" (in this case, deciding one was born in the wrong body).
No, actually he said "at least one psychiatric diagnosis," and then goes on to suggest that GD might be a further mental health condition. I was assuming the patient was initially being treated for anxiety (or whatever) related to GD, and the other psychiatric diagnosis or diagnoses would be something else. Otherwise he and I were essentially in agreement.
>>Of 10,270 transgender patients identified, 58% (n=5940) had at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared with 13.6% (n=7,311,780) in the control patient population (p<0.0005).
What it does NOT say is that 58% had a *past history* of psychiatric disorders (ranging in their list from General Anxiety to Schizophrenia).
The authors admit that their survey is very incomplete, as it is an American survey, and privacy concerns and Federal law prevent them from harvesting historical patient information. Therefore the "psych diagnosis" isn't something from an old chart, it's one concurrent with the patient's present treatment:
>>This study was limited by not having access to individual patient charts through the Explorys database. Thus, we were not able to confirm gender minority-associated codes nor query transgender patients...Finally, we have no method through Explorys to verify the individual mental health diagnoses, the credentials of the health care worker assigning that diagnosis, when they might have been diagnosed, or how diagnoses may have changed over time...
In other words, their '58%' is scarcely more solid than that '48%' we were talking about. One of those box-of-sand surveys where you can't investigate even the limited data you come up with.
You don't want to challenge me in this stuff. I've done it longer and I do it better. Best of luck with your Substack.
"It was recommended that health professionals tell parents that 48 per cent of trans youth have attempted suicide—a statistic from a low-quality online survey—and that the single biggest risk to their child would be a lack of parental support in transition. This approach was described as “empowering” parents to effectively stop their child committing suicide, and not acknowledged as emotional blackmail." --- note the Baker et al 2021 evidence review comissioned in part by WPATH: https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/5/4/bvab011/6126016
"We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide." (They rated the evidence on this issue "insufficient."
And this is exactly right.
We often speak of institutional capture, but it hits differently when you see it. AusPATH did not present as a healthcare professionals’ organisation using its expertise for advocacy; it presented as an advocacy organisation using its healthcare credentials for ideology.
The eminent Finnish clinician Riittakerttu Kaltiala says---
"I am also disturbed by how gender clinicians routinely warn American parents [substitute parents in your own country] that there is an enormously elevated risk of suicide if they stand in the way of their child’s transition. Any young person’s death is a tragedy, but careful research shows that suicide is very rare. It is dishonest and extremely unethical to pressure parents into approving gender medicalization by exaggerating the risk of suicide."
Dr Kaltiala must have read this on social media. I see she was visiting New York around the time she wrote this, but I'll bet you a fat red apple she did not encounter any American parents or physicians using that line. I've never heard it, not in real life.
Granted, I don't think I *know* anyone in those circles where one presumably might hear that suicide claim, but we're talking about an ultra-rare condition in the first place, albeit one blown way out of proportion by the media and assorted rent-seeking hucksters. So in all likelihood no one with any credibility has ever said it.
This is beyond institutional capture, this is a cult.
A critical subset of medical practitioners ( child and adolescent psychiatrists, paediatricians, paediatric endocrinologists) inexplicably totally captured by the dominant subset of “ Health Professionals “, viz., social scientists./ psychologists. What better example of the woke being prepared to “fight harder, and to take no prisoners “?
These activists have been able to capture the relevant medical colleges, the regulatory body AHPRA, and the ( lay, so somewhat excused) legislators. Whenever this nightmare unravels, the social costs ( to so many young folk) and the processional medical reputational costs will be beyond estimate.
This nonsense is the antithesis of science and common sense It is a corruption of the ethics and ideals of the disciplines that should be held sacred in medicine.
As I have stated previously in this forum:
Virtually every principle enshrined in medical practice to ensure safety and efficacy has been ignored in the field of gender medicine.
Children diagnosed with GD are offered off-label hormones as a precursor to irreversible genital mutilation and sterilisation.
Normal circumstance would demand an immediate cessation of such an invasive process pending confirmation of positive outcome via an appropriate clinical trial.
Not so! The absurd notion that changing girls into boys and boys into girls is lifesaving thereby sidelining scrutiny in the rush ‘get it done and save a life’.
We have ventured into a brave new world where the rules don’t hold and its pioneers are applauded as brave and noble.
I suspect few hospital administrators know that these treatments are justified as routine on the basis of recommendations from AusPATH, WPATH and its other emanations.
Might they not just think you go to the expert specialists and for this condition, this is "the" group?
This account accurately reflects my experience attending the AusPATH Conference in 2019: a melange of pseudo-science masquerading as research, shared among an unquestioning group of ideologues. I had attended as an observer to deepen my knowledge of the trans phenomenon, as I work to support schools managing the needs of trans children, but I was refused membership of AusPATH because my unquestioning acceptance of the affirmation model could not be guaranteed. So much for an open and objective search for truth.
BTW I did learn how deeply the affirmation model leans on Critical Psychology - a clinical misuse of an otherwise important epistemic theory. When I realised that this is the intellectual foundation of the trans narrative, I came to believe that the whole trans edifice has no solid foundation.
Bernard, you did well to get hold of this article. Not many surprises to me, though maybe many for the general public. One surprise for me was the perception that governments are hostile to the transing movement, I thought Aussie federal and state governments were very much in support.
Bill, I think this contradiction reflects the absolutist nature of trans demands. Given 4/5th of what they want, they are enraged by the denial of the final 1/5th. It is a worldview in which everyone else is supposedly seeking their erasure, their genocide. And yet when asked if there's anything odd about exponential increases in gender clinic caseloads, they say 'nothing to worry about it', this surge in patient numbers reflects a more understanding & accepting society.
And big thanks to the author for giving up her precious time and for sharing this. I hope the emotional labour involved didn't cause her to resort to the beanbag room at any point.
I often wonder this. If your commitment is to queering and transgression and to the prioritisation of identitarian viewpoints over solid scholarship then anything really does go. Everything has validity within its own framework and is worthy of consideration. By these measures science, medicine and evidence based procedures are only as important as the "newly emerging field of trans epistemology". No wonder transactivism is a form of bullying when the only rational explanation for much of what happens at the Auspath conference and in the development of guidelines (Bernard's recent article about my analysis of the PATHA) is 'because we say so'. At the recent Genspect webinar this was described as a scientistic, rather than a scientific view by Simon Tegg in a piece of insightful analysis of the way New Zealand's 11* higher rate than the UK is portrayed not as a scandal but as responding to a need.
I would like to know more about this 48% survey. Adam Bandt (Greens leader) mentions this on his website. 48% will suicide if they don't transition etc. I found this since posting. https://www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/
More here, Bill.
https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/suicides-spectre?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
It’s a boldfaced lie, basically. Prof Michael Biggs looked at all the available evidence and found the actual rate is 0.03% or 1 teen suicide per 3,300 teen patients. It would be hard to argue this is higher than a comparable population with equivalent mental health problems who don’t identify as trans. I can link to the study when I get home if you like.
Here’s the study: scroll down to “results” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8888486/
Yep. Meanwhile, all of the available objective evidence shows that suicide attempts increase after transition, which contradicts the "life-saving" claim.
The only 2 long-term followup studies show that actual suicide rates increase after transitioning:
Sweden: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
Denmark suicides: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2806531
The Denmark study group also showed that Mental Health diagnoses and prescriptions did not decrease: https://academic.oup.com/ejendo/article-abstract/189/3/336/7261571
This short-term followup (2 years) illustrates the hazards of relying on self-assessments. The transitioning kids SAID they had fewer suicidal thoughts, but their rate of ACTUAL suicides jumped:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
This retrospective study of 9 years of US military family healthcare data shows that kids showed no decrease in mental health care utilization, and were prescribed psychotropic meds more often after transition than before:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34247956/
Quasi-statistical claims about suicide are rife with shaky data and logical fallacies. For example, what does it mean 'that suicide attempts increase after transition'? What is the comparison population? People who haven't transitioned? Meaning, the general population, the rest of us? Not exactly a meaningful comparison. We should routinely expect that a tiny subset of people who have been extensively medicalized and subjected to psychotherapy will have a higher suicide rate, regardless of specific medical treatment.
Likewise we should expect that kids who have been in the mental-hygiene mill (the last study you link) for whatever reason will be using psychotherapy and 'psychotropic meds' at a higher rate than their siblings.
Moreover, the 'after transition' cohorts in those Swedish and Danish statistics, and the gender-affirmation youngsters in the last study, do not consist entirely of people who had 'transitioned', rather they were simply people who were considered to have a 'transgender identity' because they had been patients at the clinics. In all likelihood the vast majority of them never actually changed their sex, and therefore should not be counted as post-transitioners.
You clearly are not a scientist, don't understand statistics and didn't read/understand the linked studies.
"Suicide attempts increase after transition" means that the rate of suicide attempts increase after transition.
Face it, medicalization is not the "life-saving" treatment for dysphoria that its proponents falsely claim. It's an act of iatrogenic harm, leading to a lifetime of increasing medicalization for multiplying health and mental problems and premature death.
You can leave your personal remarks at the door. Obviously I couldn't have critiqued the studies in detail if I hadn't seen them at least once.
The Danish study compares those with 'transgender identity' (meaning those who had once registered with a clinic) with the general population. The Swedish study compares post-srs psychiatric patients with the general population. The 'US military family data' study compares kids who've had long-term psychotherapy to their non-therapied siblings. None of these was a properly controlled study where you compare two populations, like-with-like.
Of COURSE people who've been in the psychiatric mill are more likely to be getting therapy and meds now, or be in a distressed state. David Foster Wallace, Jerzy Kosinski, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath all committed suicide. Are we going to blame this on their clinical treatment? Or might it have something to do with being a creative writer? Or—just a guess—something unrelated to both?
Sshhh. Don't try to pretend that you've read and understood studies that you haven't. Actual scientists can tell.
Bill,
The high prevalence of mental health disorders in the gender dysphoria cohort has been well documented. One study (of many) in the journal ‘Transgender Health’ titled ‘Mental Health Diagnoses Among Transgender Patients in the Clinical Setting’
Stated:
Of 10,270 transgender patients identified, 58% (n=5940) had at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared with 13.6% (n=7,311,780) in the control patient population (p<0.0005)
The data suggests that gender dysphoria is indeed a mental health condition and that self-harming, suicidal ideation and other dramatics are commonly related to mental health disorders.
The sobering reality is that I can not find a single record case of suicide related to gender dysphoria in Australia.
In reality the ‘48%’ claim is in all likelihood an exaggeration of feature of a cohort with severe mental health disorders as are found in those with gender dysphoria.
Actually your cited data suggest merely that people seeking psychotherapy will have more than one problem in their lives, and more than one simple diagnosis. These things come in clusters. I've never seen a psychiatric diagnosis that went, "Has bipolar disorder, nothing else."
As for the '48%' claim, it's from what Bernard Lane calls a low-quality survey (in his linked story, above) with a grand total of 27 respondents self-identifying with a 'trans' identity. But that 'trans' identification is loose and nebulous since it can include all manner of things. End of the day, it is meaningless.
Your first paragraph is making the same point he made. One mental illness tends to lead to another/"cluster" (in this case, deciding one was born in the wrong body).
No, actually he said "at least one psychiatric diagnosis," and then goes on to suggest that GD might be a further mental health condition. I was assuming the patient was initially being treated for anxiety (or whatever) related to GD, and the other psychiatric diagnosis or diagnoses would be something else. Otherwise he and I were essentially in agreement.
Not having access to the study he was talking about, and not being a physician or scientist, you misunderstood him and assumed wrong.
The bit you missed is that the 58% of trans patients had *a history* of at least one psych diagnosis when they came in for treatment for GD.
I DON'T HAVE ACCESS? Wrong again. It's right HERE. I have access to most NIH papers, through one institution or another. Full paper, not abstract:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830528/
What it says is:
>>Of 10,270 transgender patients identified, 58% (n=5940) had at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared with 13.6% (n=7,311,780) in the control patient population (p<0.0005).
What it does NOT say is that 58% had a *past history* of psychiatric disorders (ranging in their list from General Anxiety to Schizophrenia).
The authors admit that their survey is very incomplete, as it is an American survey, and privacy concerns and Federal law prevent them from harvesting historical patient information. Therefore the "psych diagnosis" isn't something from an old chart, it's one concurrent with the patient's present treatment:
>>This study was limited by not having access to individual patient charts through the Explorys database. Thus, we were not able to confirm gender minority-associated codes nor query transgender patients...Finally, we have no method through Explorys to verify the individual mental health diagnoses, the credentials of the health care worker assigning that diagnosis, when they might have been diagnosed, or how diagnoses may have changed over time...
In other words, their '58%' is scarcely more solid than that '48%' we were talking about. One of those box-of-sand surveys where you can't investigate even the limited data you come up with.
You don't want to challenge me in this stuff. I've done it longer and I do it better. Best of luck with your Substack.
This is criminal:
"It was recommended that health professionals tell parents that 48 per cent of trans youth have attempted suicide—a statistic from a low-quality online survey—and that the single biggest risk to their child would be a lack of parental support in transition. This approach was described as “empowering” parents to effectively stop their child committing suicide, and not acknowledged as emotional blackmail." --- note the Baker et al 2021 evidence review comissioned in part by WPATH: https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/5/4/bvab011/6126016
"We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide." (They rated the evidence on this issue "insufficient."
And this is exactly right.
We often speak of institutional capture, but it hits differently when you see it. AusPATH did not present as a healthcare professionals’ organisation using its expertise for advocacy; it presented as an advocacy organisation using its healthcare credentials for ideology.
Thank you!
The eminent Finnish clinician Riittakerttu Kaltiala says---
"I am also disturbed by how gender clinicians routinely warn American parents [substitute parents in your own country] that there is an enormously elevated risk of suicide if they stand in the way of their child’s transition. Any young person’s death is a tragedy, but careful research shows that suicide is very rare. It is dishonest and extremely unethical to pressure parents into approving gender medicalization by exaggerating the risk of suicide."
https://www.thefp.com/p/gender-affirming-care-dangerous-finland-doctor
Dr Kaltiala must have read this on social media. I see she was visiting New York around the time she wrote this, but I'll bet you a fat red apple she did not encounter any American parents or physicians using that line. I've never heard it, not in real life.
Granted, I don't think I *know* anyone in those circles where one presumably might hear that suicide claim, but we're talking about an ultra-rare condition in the first place, albeit one blown way out of proportion by the media and assorted rent-seeking hucksters. So in all likelihood no one with any credibility has ever said it.
“ professional reputational”costs