What do you think should happen?
So there exists a novel (as in this only happened once) case of an individual non-binary adult who requested this treatment and the ethics of this case is being debated within the medical establishment in terms of the risk-bennefit relationship with regard to the patient, as it should, with the author of the article taking the side that the benefits are greater than the risks.
How does this relate to the much larger number of cases of pediatric transgender individuals who are being prohibited from temporarily delaying puberty as part of a firmly established treatment protocol for which the medical establishment, with the possible exception of a few agenda blinded individuals, has determined has much greater benefit to the individuals than any risks they may have.
I havent t a clue I’m not sure I’d want a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers for a child who has no affinity for being either gender.
Teen suicide, as a direct result of the denial of affirmative care, does seem to be a recent phenomenon. Is there evidence that it was widespread in, say, the 1950s?
We’re told that transgender people are born, not made. Therefore, the number of transgender people per capita in 1950 was the same as it is today. The difference is that many of them remained in the closet due to lack of acceptance.
If the denial of affirmative care really is a very, very severe suicide risk, if it massively increases a transgender youth’s likelihood of dying by their own hand, then we should, logically, have seen, for decades if not centuries, a consistent rate of ostensibly motiveless child suicides which can only now, in retrospect, be identified as the desperate acts of unaffirmed, closeted transgender teens.
In fact, we don’t see anything like that. We see a large spike in childhood mental illness over the last three decades, a sharp rise in teen suicide over the same period, and a sharp rise in children identifying as transgender in the last 15 or so years. Are these things related? It’s difficult to say. But the notion that denying trans kids affirmation and care massively increases their suicide risk doesn’t seem to align with long term data.
How often should we consider what you’d want a doctor to do?
No, the article debates the pros and cons of this treatment for a hypothetical person named Phoenix.
I stopped reading there, at the word hypothetical, but fuck me, at least I made it that far.
You should try and get published. In the meanwhile, we can trust the science that, you know, actually exists.
Sorry you’re right, I didn’t read far enough. They really should have included that important fact in the Abstract and Case study description.
So, “Not my imagination.” is only partially true!
So what that Phoenix is from neverland it’s still a realistic case based on clinical experience.
In this paper, we identify and analyse the key ethical issues relevant to Phoenix’s case, a hypothetical yet realistic case based on clinical experience.
Is there evidence that there were a lot of transgender kids committing suicide in the 1950s?
No, there is not. Do you really need someone to explain to you why that is?
How would that work, exactly? 15 year old John Smith kills himself in 1952. What data would we expect to be able to see, in 2023, that would tell us, “John Smith killed himself because he was trans.”
Instead of looking at historical data, maybe do the sensible thing, and look at the medical data, instead?
Get the Facts: The Truth About Transition-Related Care for Transgender Youth.
Go start your own thread about hypotheticals, then. It has no bearing on the very real issues trans children are facing from Republican legislation.
But I’m referring to data that actually exists. The teen suicide rate has skyrocketed in the last 30 years. If a lack of affirmative care makes trans youth so much more likely to commit suicide, and if there were as many trans youth in 1950 as there are today then we should either:
A). Not see such a dramatic increase.
B). Be able to identify a factor or factors completely external to trans healthcare that explain the spike.
The fact that the increase has been very dramatic, and the fact that we’ve (so far as I know) failed to identify any external factors to explain it, suggests to me that one or more of three things is true:
A) There were fewer trans kids in 1950.
B) There was the same number of trans kids in 1950, but they had some unknown way of dealing with the lack of affirmation they would’ve gotten which kept them from committing suicide.
C) Lack of affirmative care does not, in and of itself, increase suicide risk.
I’m not saying all of these are true, and I wouldn’t want to make a stab at saying which are the likeliest. But the notion that denying affirmative care massively increases the likelihood that trans kids will kill themselves doesn’t seem to be borne out by the historical data.
But it’s borne out by the current data.
No, but what we would expect to see is “15 year old John Smith killed himself for no reason we could figure out.” We would expect to see these a lot, because the number of trans kids in 1950 would’ve been the same as it is today and absolutely none of them were being affirmed.
Then, over time, as transgenderism became more mainstream, we’d expect to see the number of cases of “John Smith killed himself and we don’t know why” go down and, simultaneously, the number of cases of “John Smith killed himself because he was denied gender affirming care” go up.
But we don’t see this. Instead, what we see are simultaneous spikes in childhood mental illness and teen suicide starting about 30 years ago. The only ways I can think of to square this with the claim that denying gender affirming care hugely increases a trans kid’s risk of suicide are:
A) There were simply far fewer trans kids in the ‘50s.
B) Trans kids in the ‘50s had some way of dealing with the lack of affirmative care which has since been forgotten.
Of the two, I’d say A is the more likely. The only remaining explanation is that A and B are false but there’s something else driving suicide among trans kids which isn’t related to a lack of affirmative care. But I’d still say option A is the best fit.
I wouldn’t. People hate that. They’ll just attribute it to some other reason so they can close the case. Especially when the real reason is so taboo that it’s not even acknowledged to exist at all, and society is so repressed compared to today.
Well, compared to the sterling citations the good doctor and the navigator have provided, I can see how the Mayo Clinic’s assessment could be suspect. Better the kids put a bullet through their head than risk a delay in becoming manly men or womenly women.
No, what we would expect to see is “15 year old John Smith killed himself because of [insert current go-to moral-panic explanation here].” And that is indeed what we see.
Man, this is some ridiculous reasoning. You’re starting from bad data. We don’t know the reasons for most suicides. We also don’t have particularly good stats on historical suicide rates because there used to be such a strong taboo on suicide. Historical data on suicides is distorted because many suicides would be recorded as accidents for the sake of the family, and many people who committed suicide did so in ways to make it look accidental, to not embarrass their survivors. And you reason from that bad foundation only two possible conclusions? How about C) the number of suicidal trans kids has remained largely steady, while suicide among youth in general has increased due to some factor unrelated to gender identity?
And you still haven’t explained why you’re looking at historical suicide trends, and not at medical studies about the mental health of gender non-confirming kids today. What do you expect to find in the historical record that would justify ignoring the 80% rate of suicidal ideation among trans people?
The teen suicide rate today is not much different than in 1980 and in fact has fallen in the last 30 years.
Care to back up your assertions, bud?