When children diagnose themselves
“When doctors always give patients what they want (or think they want), the fallout can be disastrous, as we have seen with the opioid crisis. And there is every possibility that the inappropriate medical treatment of children with gender dysphoria may follow a similar path. Practitioners understandably want to protect their patients from psychic pain. But quick fixes based only on self-reporting can have tragic long-term consequences. And already, a growing number of trans “desistors” (also known as detransitioners) are seeking accountability from the medical professionals who’d rubber-stamped their trans claims.”
(Marcus Evans, “Why I resigned from Tavistock: Trans-Identified Children Need Therapy, Not Just ‘Affirmation’ and Drugs”, published on 17 January 2020 in Quillette.Com)
For three years renowned psychoanalyst and psychiatrist David Bell (70) was in trouble with top management at the Tavistock and Portman National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust for blowing the whistle on questionable practices in its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).
A high court judicial review of the GIDS in England in December 2020, brought by Bell-namesake Keira Bell (23), “ruled that children under 16 were unlikely to be able to give informed consent to receive puberty blocking drugs” (The Guardian, 6 December 2020).
Soon after, in January this year, the older Bell – under constant threat of disciplinary action by his bosses – retired. He is now free to talk openly about these issues, according to a The Guardian interview with him on 2 May 2021.
The December 2020 Bell versus Tavistock court decision ruled that “referrals for the drugs and cross-sex hormones for under-16s will be permitted only when approved by the court” (see the document online: www.judiciary.uk, titled Bell -v- Tavistock judgement – Courts and Tribunals Judiciary).
The younger Bell was a recipient of a GIDS medical intervention from 16. She received puberty blocker drugs and had a mastectomy in her then-quest to become male (read her account of her transgender journey and eventual decision to de-transition: www.persuasion.community, titled Keira Bell: My Story – Persuasion).
The Tavistock appealed against the high court’s December 2020 decision and its appeal will be heard this month.
Meanwhile the British Care Quality Commission (CQC) in January 2021 gave GIDS its lowest rating, “inadequate”, which according to the BBC News means “it is performing badly” (“The crisis at the Tavistock’s child gender clinic, 20 March 2021). The BBC News also reports that the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) found low evidence for the hormonal treatment of “young people struggling with their gender identity” (“Evidence for puberty blockers very low, says NICE”, 1 April 2021).
In his interviews with The Guardian and BBC News the senior Bell noted that all the information that emerged in the course of the high court case – such as that GIDS and the Tavistock could not provide factual evidence for its reliance on trans-ideology-based interventions – has yet to have an effect on how the Tavistock manages and GIDS executes its mandate. From 2015 onwards, as referrals to GIDS mushroomed and young girls became almost two thirds of the referrals, a number of reports that investigated this dilemma were made available and were almost all quashed.
Towards the end of last year the NHS “announced an independent review into gender identity services for children and young people … which GIDS supports” (“The crisis at the Tavistock’s child gender clinic”, BBC News, 30 March 2021). This review is led by Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. The outcome of the Cass Review is still awaited.
Bell, former Tavistock board member Marcus Evans and Kirsty Entwistle who worked in the Tavistock’s Leeds service are among the clinicians who left the Tavistock’s service as a result of GIDS’ practices. They have been speaking up about what can be seen as the extinguishing of the talking cure in GIDS. They mention how labels of transphobia are liberally handed out when anyone dares to speak out. This silences healthy scientific information-gathering and debate.
Bell also made mention of how the lawyer whose services he started using when top management started clamping down on him warned him against sitting on information of harm and not disclosing it. After speaking to ten GIDS colleagues who implored him to do something, Bell wrote a report in 2018 which his superiors kept from many. His lawyer told him: “ … on the contrary, a failure to send it out might make him culpable in the event of any further legal case taken against the trust” (The Guardian, 2 May 2021). In addition to refusing to remain quiet about the disquiet of his colleagues, Bell also launched two crowdfunding drives to pay his legal costs.
Among the leading lights in psychoanalysis who highlight problems with what is called a gender-affirmative approach is Alessandra Lemma who, like Evans in The Guardian, puts forward a treatment model for children and adolescents with trans ideation (“Trans-itory identities: some psychoanalytic reflections on transgender identities” in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2018), 99 (5), pp. 1089 – 1106).
All of the clinicians named here make reference to how internet sites, such as Mermaids, push the trans-ideology. Fragile children and adolescents, who often face multiple mental health issues, get stirred up by the trans-ideology solutions offered on these sites. In her piece on de-transitioning Keira Bell also mentions how an alternative site helped her understand she had other options.
Mermaids is a trans-ideology charity while Transgender Trends is a charity that insists that no child is born in the wrong body.
If you Google Mermaids, you will also see how the national lotteries board in England investigated the GIDS issue to see whether it should let Mermaids receive a large lump sum with which to fund GIDS. The funding relationship between GIDS and Mermaid is mentioned often in the different news articles quoted here. It is said to cloud the judgement of the powers that be.
This article was the lead in SAPI News 5 of June 2021.