The movement backing gender-transition treatment for children is built on the claim that pediatric medical interventions are not only “medically necessary” – but truly “life saving.”
However, no researchers have ever tried to figure out whether this claim is true.
A new study arrives as medical interventions for trans young-people have emerged at the center of our national culture wars. DANIEL WILLIAM MCKNIGHT
Until now.
A major new study out of Finland found that providing cross-sex hormones and gender-transition surgeries to adolescents and young adults didn’t appear to have any significant effect on suicide deaths. What’s more, gender distress severe enough to send young people to a gender clinic wasn’t independently linked to a higher suicide death rate either.
What was independently tied to a greater chance of suicide in young adults? A high number of appointments with mental-health specialists; in other words, severe mental health challenges.
Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, chief psychiatrist at the Tampere University Hospital Department of Adolescent Psychiatry in Finland. Riittakerttu. Dr. Kaltiala is the author of this remarkable new study on transgender young people Riittakerttu Kaltiala/Handout via REUTERS
And so, the researchers concluded two things: One, that suicide deaths were higher, but still rare in gender-distressed young people. And two, that this group’s higher suicide rate was tied to the fact that they had a higher rate of severe psychiatric problems, not to their gender distress.
What these young people need most urgently, the study authors concluded, is comprehensive mental health care – and not necessarily controversial medical interventions.
This study gets to the heart of a fierce debate: Whether trans-identified youths’ high rate of mental health problems is mostly caused by society’s harsh judgment of trans people.
Or whether, as many skeptics argue, at least some young people might identify as trans as a way of dealing with mental health issues that are not driven by gender identity.
Erica Anderson, a trans woman, psychologist and the former head of USPATH, part of the trans-medicine association WPATH, said the new Finnish study is “going to make a big splash.” She frowned upon a reportedly common question gender clinics ask of on-the-fence parents: “Would you rather have a living son or dead daughter?”
Psychologist Erica Anderson says the new study is bound “to make a splash.” Facebook / Erica Anderson
“It is most unethical to say that kind of thing to parents,” said Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, leader of the new study, published Feb. 17, and top adolescent psychiatrist at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. “It’s not based on facts.”
Dr. Marci Bowers, a gender-affirmation surgeon and president of WPATH, said it was time to refocus the conversation on medical interventions for young people. Because “suicide is and has always been a poor way of measuring the efficacy of gender-affirming care,” she said.
Dr. Kaltiala’s research findings fly in the face of a vast and powerful coalition of supporters of gender-transition treatment for young people, who all claim it is life saving – including WPATH, major U.S. medical societies like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the ACLU, and LGBTQ groups like GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign.
The study’s conclusion that medical interventions do not necessarily saves lives flies in the face of pro-surgery organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Dr. Kaltiala was once herself a supporter of gender-transition treatment for adolescents. She launched one of Finland’s first pediatric gender clinics in 2011, but soon started having doubts.
Since then, multiple teams of researchers have systematically reviewed the available studies about gender-transition medicine for kids. They all found the science subpar and uncertain.
For her new study, Dr. Kaltiala’s team relied on Finland’s nationalized health records.
They examined records on all 2,083 people who had their first visit to either of the nation’s two gender clinics at age 22 or younger—at 18 on average and as young as eight—from 1996 to 2019.
These researchers put together a comparison group of nearly 17,000 Finns. This included eight people for each gender-distressed person, matched to their age and birthplace.
Paul Garcia-Ryan, president of Therapy First, which calls for counseling as the priority treatment for youth gender distress, cautions journalists and doctors to not oversimplify suicide or say it’s an expected response to any one factor. Therapy First
There was an average of nearly 7 years of health information on each person, through June 2022.
Thirty-eight percent of the gender-distressed youths went on cross-sex hormones or received gender-transition surgeries. Many started this treatment before age 18, Dr. Kaltiala said.
There were 55 deaths. Twenty were suicides, including 7, or 0.3 percent, of the gender-distressed youths and 0.1 percent of the comparison group.
The findings that neither going to a gender clinic nor undergoing gender-transition treatment was tied to an independent significant difference in the suicide rate built on a 2023 study by Dr. Kaltiala. That paper showed that after people received gender-transition treatment, they didn’t then see psychiatric specialists any less often. This suggested that the treatment didn’t improve their mental health.
“We must not think that gender-reassignment alone is all the help that they need,” Dr. Kaltiala said of gender-distressed youths.
There is no word as to how mainstream US medical associations and gender clinics will respond to the new Finnish report. EPA
Paul Garcia-Ryan, president of Therapy First, which calls for counseling as the priority treatment for youth gender distress, pointed to guidelines that say journalists and doctors shouldn’t oversimplify suicide or say it’s an expected response to any one factor. Doing so, Mr. Garcia-Ryan said, might actually cause “or worsen suicidal thoughts in vulnerable young people.”
It remains to be seen whether supporters of access to gender-transition medicine for teens will take the Finnish study’s findings to heart. GLAAD, for one, has claimed that the “science is settled” regarding the benefits of such treatment. But the science is complex and ever-evolving.
Groundbreaking and data-driven, these Finnish studies strongly suggest that the time has come to move away from claims that medical interventions are life saving for young people and increase the support for mental health care instead.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/opinion/a-finnish-study-is-changing-how-we-approach-trans-kids/