Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children

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This was a time when two thirds of referrals were boys, average age 11 at referral. Over 25% had spent time in care (compared to a rate of 0.67% for the general children’s population (2021)). 42% had experienced the loss of one or both parents through bereavement or separation. Only 2.5% had no associated problems; about 70% had more than five ‘associated features’ such as physical abuse, anxiety and school attendance issues. 42% suffered from ‘depression/misery.’ Close to a quarter of those aged 12 and over had a history of self-harming and the same percentage exhibited ‘inappropriately sexualised behaviour.’ I want every institution and every politician who pontificates about gender to read this book and ask what happened to all those lost girls and boys – and why they were complicit.

Time to Think, The Inside Story of the Collapse of the

Actually, there isn't agreement amongst frontline clinicians working with this group of young people about how best to care for them, and how there may be different ways to care for different people. A deeply reported, scrupulously non-judgmental account of the collapse of the NHS service, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with former clinicians and patients. It is also a jaw-dropping insight into failure: failure of leadership, of child safeguarding and of the NHS’ – Sunday Times FiLiA: I wondered a bit about how it compares to other stories that you've covered in your career, because you've been working in journalism for a while. And this is something you're very experienced in, researching and telling stories so that people can understand them and it's accessible. How does it compare to perhaps other clinical stories that you've covered or aspects in other areas of society? And was there anything that was particularly surprising that you found about researching and writing this book?A one sided view which fails to take sufficient account of the voices of transgender people. It is purely looking to follow an anti transgender and gender critical view point. Cultural Influences and Debate Wider cultural influences, indoctrination in “gender identity” and debate/argument The pair started a new service, identifying people who were ready for transition by assessing them before they started hormones. This approach, involving an assessment by a psychiatrist, was criticised as pathologising by the trans community, but they say it has resulted in dramatically better outcomes. As Barnes makes perfectly clear, this isn’t a culture war story. This is a medical scandal, the full consequences of which may only be understood in many years’ time. Among her interviewees is Dr Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist who now works in Ireland. A long career in gender medicine has taught Moran that, for some adults, transition can be a “fantastic thing”. Yet in 2019, he called for Gids’ assessments of Irish children (the country does not have its own clinic for young people) to be immediately terminated, so convinced was he that its processes were “unsafe”. The be-kind brigade might also like to consider the role money played in the rise of Gids. By 2020-21, the clinic accounted for a quarter of the trust’s income.

Hannah Barnes and Time to Think — FiLiA Hannah Barnes and Time to Think — FiLiA

So, as Dr Hilary Cass, who is undertaking a very thorough review of this whole area of healthcare for young people, has said: GIDS, the Gender Identity Development Service, has not been subjected to the level of oversight that one might expect of a service using innovative treatments on children. And the experience of some clinicians was that general concerns were not treated in the spirit that they were intended. The results were not good; “the children’s gender-related distress and general mental health – when based on clinical measures of things like self-harm, suicidal ideation and body image – had either plateaued or worsened.” Moreover, “Researchers reported a statistically significant increase in those answering the statement ‘I deliberately try to hurt or kill myself ’ as well as a significant increase in behavioural and emotional problems for natal girls.” Even though there was no clinically measurable positive impact on psychological well-being, GIDS chose instead to focus on the children’s self-reports of being “highly satisfied with the treatment”. When one of the leaders of a service that helps children to access powerful, life-changing drugs comments that what they are doing is “mad”, there is clearly a very big problem.” To make this clear, we are not referring to anyone who is in the least bit “transphobic.” Rather, these clinicians feel the insane increase in referral numbers of trans children over the years needs to be examined more closely as to , rather than simply ignoring the problem. It’s unbelievable to me that the most vulnerable members of our population, children (sometimes as young as 3 or 4!) are being put onto a pathway which clearly isn’t right for them and at times when they clearly aren’t struggling with gender identity itself, but rather homosexuality, and often puberty and the awkwardness that EVERY child goes through at its onset. FiLiA: I just wondered, for example, I think you say in the book, it's quite difficult to get psychologists to speak about something. And in this case, you had a certain cohort of people who are really quite desperate to get their story out. And then you had others who perhaps weren't so happy to have their name on the record, but would also want to be discussing things. And then others who, at least it looked like in the footnotes, there were some people who just didn't want to be participating in the book. And so I suppose from that sort of perspective, was this atypical? Is this what normally happens?Not only is this pathway wrong, but unlike claims made to the contrary, it almost certainly is hurting children and we simply aren’t hearing enough of the detransition/regret stories (and neither are they) because it has turned into a bizarre political and ideological battle, where instead of encouraging free thinking, doctors and providers are being forced to STOP thinking and prescribe to the status quo, or find somewhere else to work. The story begins in 1989 when a psychoanalyst called Dr Domenico di Ceglie became convinced there was a need for a clinic that focused on gender identity issues in children. . Whether GIDS operated within the framework of gender identity theory or a more developmental understanding of gender dysphoria never seemed to be properly clarified. This ambiguity seems to be a fatal flaw in the service as clinicians operated from different theoretical perspectives. Edit: to those saying the book is based on first hand experiences. The book interviews four people. Just four out of the thousands and thousands successfully treated. Do we base the success of a place on four people or the many thousands? We were seeing very haphazard referrals from Irish psychologists operating mainly in the private sector, where somebody was going along, saying, ‘I think I have gender dysphoria,’ and there wasn’t really an assessment being carried out,” O’Shea says. “We began to see more and more disasters,” Moran explains. There were suicides; other people barely left their homes in years.