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Puberty Blockers and Trans Suicides
At National Review, Madeleine Kearns linked to an important Heritage Foundation study:
In the past several years, the suicide rate among those ages 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such a provision. Before 2010, these two groups of states did not differ in their youth suicide rates. Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available, elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions became observable.
Rather than being protective against suicide, this pattern indicates that easier access by minors to cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent is associated with higher risk of suicide.
This is easy to understand.
“Transgendered” people all have serious mental illnesses. 100% of them, I have treated scores and most of them were depressed. Others were bipolar, schizophrenic, but mostly depressed.
Depressed people are often suicidal.
Depressed people whose delusional thinking about their sex is reinforced and whose underlying depression is ignored do not become less depressed, and thus are more likely to suffer death by suicide.
Depressed people whose delusional thinking about their sex is denied and whose underlying depression is treated are less likely to suffer suicide.
Madeleine Kearns does consistently good work in this topic.
Published in General
This is an interesting study. Thanks for the information.
There is a limitation in the study, which it acknowledges, though I worry that it didn’t deal with the problem very well. It was a difficult problem to address. They did not have data that would allow a double-blind trial, which they call an RCT (randomized controlled trial).
The methodology of this paper is fairly complex, relying on changes in suicide rates in states with and without easy availability of puberty blockers. It does not address other changes that may have occurred in states that made puberty blockers available, which might explain some or all of the observed increase in suicides.
For example, broader acceptance of trans-persons, including in schools, might lead to a higher prevalence of gender dysphoria, which in turn might lead to a higher suicide rate.
Fundamentally, the problem is the possibility of one or more omitted variables. This is a problem in all social science studies of this type.
Still, an interesting and informative study. With the demonstrated increase in youth suicides correlating with puberty blockers, it seems to me that this makes it even more difficult for the advocates of that policy to argue that it is doing good.
That is what’s so sad. People with serious mental problems are being told that they are fine mentally but it is their bodies that need to be fixed. The real issues are ignored in order to promote a political agenda.
Au contraire, there are more suicides because there isn’t enough acceptance. All we have to do is accept, promote, and encourage, and all these people will suddenly not feel suicidal.
I was just reading an article last night-can’t find it of course-that described a study of transgender youth from before 2013 who showed lower rates of suicide. That group was mostly male to female, which corresponds, as I understand it, to the majority of the small number of transitions before the social contagion caught on in teen aged girls. The latter group is characterized by high rates of co-morbid mental illness, and an irrational exuberance on the part of the educational and medical industry to engage in invasive treatments just on their say so. One of the comments in the article was that even if the previous studies were legitimate (and there are many flaws in them), you can’t compare the current cohort with the past cohort in any meaningful way.
[I recognize the sarcasm here.]
One of the major sources of frustration in the suicide “reporting” and opinioning by those advocating physically changing children’s (and to some extent adult’s) bodies in the name of “transgender” thoughts is implication (usually by silence) that surgery and chemical alteration of the “transgender” person’s body eliminates the suicide issue. I had seen some reporting earlier that the “transition” of the body doesn’t really change the suicide rate, so it’s helpful to see some more detailed studies using some different criteria.
I couldn’t agree more. Then add to it the realization, at some point, that you’ve permanently damaged your reproductive system. . . .
Body issues are a big deal for lots of people. Anorexia and Bulimia are very difficult to treat I hear. How much of body dysmorphia has to do with sexuality and how much of it has to do with people feeling uncomfortable with their body?
I certainly don’t know the answer to your question, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that the body dysmorphia/gender dysphoria has more to do with being uncomfortable with one’s body rather than with one’s sex.
Now imagine such a person doing irreversible damage to his/her body through drugs and surgery in an effort to mimic the opposite sex. How awful!
If my buddy came to me and said he wanted to chop off his left hand. I would advise him or her to seek psychological help. I would not assign him a surgeon.
Actually, they at least partially controlled for that factor – they compared the trend in 28-36 suicides, which would be independent of puberty blocker access. So if states had unique factors increasing suicide, or there was a general increase in suicide, this would likely show up in both groups.
If you told me I could put the brakes on puberty back in the day, I might have taken people up on it. It is not a pleasant process, with vast surges of hormones warping your body and mind. Kids are biochemically ready for reproduction really early, far earlier than we would consider maturity. With doctors telling kids that a puberty blocker treatment is just like hitting pause on a video, I can see why kids are going for it.
The left wants fewer children anyway. They see it as a win.
My thought is that there aren’t that many more sick, neurotic people than there were when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s. The idiocy of transgenderism has simply given them something different to blame their depression on.
Humans evolved on the savannas of Africa and throughout their existence on this planet they have struggled physically to survive the rigors of nature. Modern man has almost no real threats to deal with. Houses protect us from the weather, medical treatment is an almost sure protection against the scourges of childhood disease, hunger is far less of a problem than obesity, and predators of the four legged variety are non-existent. Lacking these threats those who don’t compete is athletics or other physical trials like mountaineering, running, or cycling are left with nowhere for their survival instincts to go. They turn inward and create anxiety and depression and neurosis. Their normal aggressiveness inverts and attacks itself or they become pathologically aggressive toward others.
Providing an easily accessible answer to all of this inner turmoil, transgenderism has gained a lot of appeal among impressionable teenagers and, sometimes, their oblivious parents. The service providers are operating on their own greed, seeing a golden egg laying goose in the latest fad.
There will always be those who buy into whatever has become “fashionable”, and there will always be those who prey upon them. And in this modern context there is the Left seeking its own goals, and perfectly willing to use whatever human weaknesses it can exploit. We are in the midst of what might be a perfect storm.
I saw that, but I don’t think that it’s an effective control. My hypothesis is that widespread acceptance of “trans” identification influences teens to become “trans.” I do think that this is supported by the research indicating the spread of “trans” by social contagion or peer contagion.
The people in the 28-36 category may have been exposed to different circumstances in their formative years, including but not limited to the availability of puberty blockers.
It was a good idea to include people age 28-36 in the analysis, as it could help identify other trends in the number of suicides.
Remember when ‘cutting’ was a problem?
Did kids get bored of it, or just our news reporters?
It got too labor intensive, so they’ve job-shopped it out.