Mental health professionals are abandoning their duty of care when it comes to treating transgender youth, and the long-term consequences can be disastrous.
Stephanie Wynn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Portland, Oregon, told Fox News, “We’ve allowed the public eye to change our roles. The therapist’s new role.” is “basically giving people the green light or rubber stamp along with these medical procedures when it was not our role in treating other problems.”
Young people’s access to sex reassignment treatments, such as puberty blockers, heterosexual hormones and surgery, has been widely debated in recent years, with criticism that minors are too young and sometimes permanently incapable of changing their bodies. But advocates argue that such care is life-saving, facing untreated transgender youth High rates of depression and suicide.
Wynn argued that there is an established narrative of encouraging mental health professionals to accept a child’s transgender identity without scrutiny, leaving underlying mental illness untreated. As a result, young people experiencing suicidal ideation or other distress do not always receive adequate care and, in some cases, seek life-changing treatments that can cause additional problems later on. may receive.
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The number of transgender teenagers under the age of 18 doubled from 0.7% to 1.4% between 2017 and 2020. According to a UCLA studyA June report based on government health surveys found that just under 43% of the 1.6 million people had Recognize that you are transgender Between 13 and 25 in the US.
Wynn is “increasingly concerned” about the tendency of young people to identify as transgender or non-binary and that “this ideology results in lifelong irreversible medical experiments on children.” In 10 to 15 years, she said, “we’re going to see a crisis of transition regret. Unfortunately, part of that is having to worry about the most horrific mental health consequences.” It won’t,” he added.
In the last two years, 25 states have introduced laws restricting minors’ access to transsexual health care.Meanwhile, 27 states Passed law restricting GLAAD defines “transformation therapy” for transgender youth as “any attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
Mental health professionals fear backlash and risk losing their license to try to treat transgender patients outside of transitional therapy, Winn said.
“Many of my colleagues have abandoned our duty of care either through ignorance or cowardice,” she told Fox News.
gender identity disorder, As defined by the Mayo Clinicis “a feeling of discomfort or distress that can occur in people whose gender identity differs from the gender assigned at birth”. Teens who are diagnosed may be treated with puberty blockers to prevent unwanted changes such as menstruation and a deepened voice. They may then be given sex hormones to develop traits of the opposite sex, such as facial hair, or have chest or genital reassignment surgery.
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As a result of public pressure and training from trans activists, “a completely different standard” for treating gender dysphoria has been established compared to other mental health disorders, Wynn said.
As a result, therapists believe mental health professionals aren’t paying enough attention when treating transgender youth, prematurely affirming and leading children into medical care. She said that such professionals do not attempt to adequately determine whether a patient’s feelings of gender dysphoria are manifesting from other frequently associated psychiatric disorders, and not vice versa.
Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine said in April: Interview with NPR “There is no debate among medical professionals such as pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, and psychologists about the value and importance of gender-affirming care.”
Levine, who is transgender, points to many medical organizations that support “evidence-based standards of care” for gender, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. did. transitional therapy.
Wynn told Fox News, “I was told that if someone said they identified themselves this way, that was it.” Please guide them on the path to medicalization.”
Wynn previously treated transgender youth, but said she stopped doing so after activists targeted her. meeting, “strangers online,” often anonymously, threatened her “My actions are illegal and they believe I’m violating the conversion therapy ban, so they have grounds for making the report.”
Board launched Winn investigation in April but dismissed it in June, therapist says wrote on her blog.
In addition to affirming patients, Wynn said mental health professionals are expected to “drive a wedge between families.”
“Children need structure, rules, discipline and boundaries, but they are expected to tell parents that they must let their children take the lead,” she told Fox News. If not, they are bigots.”
As a doctor and father, I am ashamed of how badly my field abuses children with “gender-confirming” treatments.
“A Very Dangerous Story”
Winn says it’s not only irresponsible, but dangerous, to fail to properly eradicate the cause of a child’s distress.
Studies show that transgender youth suffer from psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, and autism, and are also at higher risk of suicide.According to a survey by trevor projectNearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year. This is almost double that of cisgender youth.
Troy Stevenson, senior campaign manager for advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, told The Washington Post: August.
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Wynn argued that the high rate of suicidal ideation among transgender youth is often falsely attributed to stigma and discrimination. He said it was used to apply pressure.
“I think it’s a very dangerous story,” Wynn told Fox News. By accepting that discrimination is a major factor behind suicidal tendencies in these cases, experts are “ignoring the real problem” and psychoanalyzing children to cause distress. “Disclaims Our Liability” to determine if there are any underlying or additional problems.
But Wynn doesn’t discount the risk of suicide among troubled youth.
“Are young people expressing suicidal thoughts? Sure. But are we dealing with it right? No,” she said.
“We need to look at how we can minimize harm and how to provide the least invasive and most effective treatments. That means psychotherapy, not medicalization,” says Wynn. He told Fox News that rather than making an immediate affirmation, mental health professionals make assessments, looking at how long a child has experienced discomfort and how the mental health problem or life change has affected them. It is necessary to investigate whether there is a possibility that it is contributing.
A family therapist who often sees parents with transgender children warned that there could be even more serious mental health crises later stemming from transgender regrets.
“There’s this epidemic of lower and lower barriers. There are fewer and fewer screenings,” Wynn said. “The age of transition is getting younger. More children are doing this, so we can expect higher post-transition regret rates.”
Within a decade, Winn fears there will be “a generation of people in their 20s and 30s who feel betrayed by everyone who ‘accepts them’: parents, teachers, doctors, therapists, friends.” .
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Common suicide risk factors include chronic pain, loss of relationships, and an unfulfilling romantic or sex life. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionWinn warned that children undergoing medical sex reassignment therapy will be at increased risk of these in the future.
“They will face the reality that they can’t have children, they can’t have sex, their bodies are hurt, hurt, hurt, embarrassed, ashamed and regretful,” she said.
Youth advocates declined to be interviewed by Fox News. The following transgender youth advocacy and support organizations did not respond to interview requests: Human Rights Campaign; National Center or Transgender Equality. National LGBTQ Task Force; Trans Youth Equality Foundation; American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network; Log Cabin Republican. Columbia’s Gender Identity Program; NYU Langone’s Transgender Health Unit;