Is transgender ideology making the UK's mental health crisis worse?

There is a mental health crisis in the UK. The symptoms are often body related, and the causes are complex, but a new orthodoxy now labels some of these people as transgender. This means that instead of getting psychological care, increasing numbers are encouraged to take potentially dangerous hormones on their way to transitioning gender. The World Health Organisation’s recent ruling that it will no longer classify being transgender as a mental illness is hailed by some as a progressive step forward. But could this shift in thinking actually compound matters and mean that transgender patients’ other medical issues are ignored?

There has undoubtedly been a cultural change on the issue of gender in the last few years. What started as a fringe view that being a boy or a girl is just an idea is moving into the mainstream; today, even the government wants to help three year olds ‘explore‘ and question their gender identity. This shift in thinking is helped along by the savvy marketing of transgender charities who tell emotional and powerful stories of how transitioning gender can be both simple and satisfying. It is no surprise, then, that since 2010 there has been an almost 1,000 per cent rise in young people attending gender clinics in the UK. But is this a cause for celebration? Or should we be worried that the speed of change on the subject of gender is not allowing the new emerging orthodoxy to be properly challenged?

Doctors based at the specialist Tavistock clinic in London are concerned:

“If a school just gets a whisper of a child who may be querying their gender and within minutes they are doing everything to make sure that child is regarded as a member of the opposite sex right from the word go — that may not be the best for that child.”