Senior Australian psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Amos has called for a complete overhaul of child gender services across Australia to prevent the country’s health system from replicating the failures of the UK system which has been found to have “let down” children questioning their identities.
It follows the findings of a major report into the UK’s treatment of children with suspected gender dysphoria which have also prompted the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) to renew calls for state and federal governments to pause the practice here, and launch urgent inquiries into the efficacy of medical intervention.
Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) will instruct UK gender clinics “to implement a pause” on first appointments for children under 18 after the release of the long-awaited review into how the government service treats young people with gender dysphoria.
The NHS commissioned retired former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Dr. Hilary Cass, to conduct an Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People. Her interim report raised serious concerns about so called gender affirming treatment for children that led to the NHS closing down the Tavistock Clinic in London.
The final report of the Cass Review provided 32 recommendations to reform gender services and urged “extreme caution” in the use of masculinising or feminising hormones on children under 16-years-old. “There should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18,” it wrote.
The report acknowledged that while many studies show that the use of puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria is “beneficial in reducing mental distress and improving the well-being of children and young people with gender dysphoria,” the “quality of these studies is poor.” It says children have been “let down” by a lack of research and “remarkably weak evidence” on medical interventions — including drugs that can pause puberty.
The review noted that health professionals working in the field are often too “afraid” to express their views, due to the “toxicity” of the public debate. It found there was no substantial evidence on the long-term impacts of medical interventions and criticised the use of gender affirmative care.
It concluded that for most young people, medical pathways may not be the best approach to managing gender-related distress. The report called for gender care to match the standards of other NHS care services with “holistic assessments,” including screening for neuro-developmental conditions such as autism, and a mental health assessment.
The findings led the head of public policy for UK ministry Christian Concern, Tim Dieppe, to call for a total ban on puberty blockers. He told Premier Christian News: “Children have been lied to. Adults have said You can be born in the wrong body. You can have these puberty blocking drugs or sex hormone drugs, and they will solve your problems, and they actually don’t. I hope that politicians and the NHS examine the evidence and move away from an ideologically-based system of affirming children in their transgender identity.”
The NHS has already stopped prescribing puberty blockers after concluding there was not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness for routine treatment. Responding to the report, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged doctors to use “extreme caution” when dealing with young people who are questioning their gender.
Meanwhile, more evidence to support that “extreme caution” has emerged from the Netherlands where a landmark 15-year study appears to confirm that “gender-confused” children are more likely than not, to “grow out of” their feelings of dysphoria.
The study included more than 2700 children beginning from the age of 11 who were asked every three years into their mid-twenties to describe their feelings about their own gender. While just over one in ten (11%) reported some degree of “non-contentedness” with their gender at some point during the study, by the age of 25 that number had dropped to one-in-25 (4%).
While the researchers acknowledged some limitations to the study — namely that the participants were taken from the general population and had not necessarily been diagnosed with gender dysphoria — they still concluded that it lent weight to the idea that discontentment with gender was more common among teens than once they become adults.
“The results of the current study might help adolescents to realise that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common,” the researchers, working from the University of Groningen, concluded.
The Daily Wire writes that: “Critics of radical gender theory were quick to point out that all the study really did was confirm what they had believed from the start: That medical intervention for what is likely a phase, and almost certainly has an emotional or psychological cause, harms more children than it could ever help.”
Patrick Brown from the US-based Ethics and Public Policy Center told the Daily Mail: “This study provides even more reason to be sceptical towards aggressive steps to facilitate gender transition in childhood and adolescence. The fact that rates of satisfaction are lower even just a few years later, suggests that for the vast majority of people, prudence and caution, rather than a rush towards permanent surgeries or hormone therapies, will be the best approach for teenagers struggling to make sense of the world and their place in it. ”
Multiple US states have already enacted full or partial bans on gender-related surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers for minors and France is the latest country to signal that it could pull back from prescribing medical interventions for children with gender dysphoria.
All this emerging evidence has added to the pressure for Australia to follow suit. Dr. Andrew Amos, who is the Queensland chair of Rural Psychiatry at the RANZ College of Psychiatrists believes the treatment of children under 18 who are reporting gender dysphoria is not being put under the same scrutiny as other medical practices — leaving the patients at risk of over-treatment and detrimental long-lasting health outcomes.
“There is no question that in order to have high quality medical services, you need to be doing adequate oversight. We call it clinical evidence and the first step is to record what you’re doing, report what you’re doing, and then review what the results have been. None of that’s happening with gender services in Australia. A lot of patients are going to be harmed,” he told The Australian.
The ACL’s Director of Policy and Research Christopher Brohier claimed: “Australian gender clinics operate in contradiction to these findings,and use medicalisation as the standard pathway to the long term harm of kids, particularly teenage girls. The irreversible harm being done to these kids as a medical experiment is a medical scandal which must cease immediately.”
“All governments must establish urgent independent inquiries into the care for sex-confused kids. In the light of the final Cass Report, the medical profession’s peak bodies must act to stop the affirmation model of treatment, which is causing great harm. How many more kids are to be damaged before we act?” he questioned in conclusion.
Image: Children’s Health Queensland
