There is no sound evidence that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones improve mental health. “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”
This is one of the conclusions of The Cass Review, conducted by National Health Services England (NHSE) under the direction of Dr. Hillary Cass in the wake of concerns about the sudden increase in referrals to gender services, especially among females with autism, mental health issues, and trauma.
The Cass Review was commissioned to make recommendations on how to improve NHSE gender identity services and ensure that children and youth receive high-quality care. The Review’s conclusions flatly contradict Dartmouth Health’s written testimony, which asserts that “all gender-affirming care is safe, age-appropriate, medically necessary, and well-researched.”
Related: Dartmouth Health Ignores the Evidence
“The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health,” the Review states. “The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.” Puberty blockers aren’t a “temporary pause” to give children and parents time to think, as Dartmouth Health claims. On the contrary, the “vast majority of young people started on puberty blockers proceed from puberty blockers to masculinising/feminising hormones.”
As a result, the NHSE is banning puberty blockers as a treatment for gender dysphoria for new patients, until and unless a safe research protocol is established. “The option to provide masculinising/feminising hormones from age 16 is available” the Review notes. But it recommends extreme caution. “There should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18.” Dr. Lim-Liberty dismissed the watch-and-wait approach as “outdated and harmful, denying resources needed to explore gender identity.”
Other highlights of the report:
Gender affirmation, including hormonal interventions, doesn’t prevent it. “Suicide risk appears to be comparable to other young people with a similar range of mental health and psychosocial challenges. Some clinicians feel under pressure to support a medical pathway based on widespread reporting that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk. The above systematic review did not support this conclusion.” This conclusion directly contradicts Dartmouth Health’s claims that “rates of suicide are as high as 40% in transgender youth,” and that “banning surgical care to care is harmful and, according to the data, is life-threatening.
Although the report doesn’t use the term Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), it recognizes social media and peer pressure as contributing to the recent spike in teens identifying as transgender, especially among teen girls after puberty. In a recent op-ed, Dr. Francis Lim-Liberty, head of Dartmouth Health’s pediatric transgender program, dismissed concerns about ROGD as “politicized misinformation” used on social media to “discredit the decisions and life experiences of trans people.”
The Cass Review warns against socially transitioning children at schools with new pronouns, names, and clothes because of the “clear risk of creating persistence of an identity that would in all likelihood have resolved by itself. We hope the government will use this information to end the practice of social transition in schools by untrained adults. The impact on other children of adults pretending a child has changed their sex is outside the terms of reference for this report, but it is something the government must address.” This is in sharp contrast with New Hampshire public schools’ practice of socially transitioning children in secret.
"Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones have zero mental health benefits." Last night I asked the Nashua Board of Aldermen to stop promoting gender ideology in light of the Cass Review. https://t.co/88tAbA2fwL #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/oiIvqTSa6H
— Sidewalk Steve (@Sidewalk_Steve) April 10, 2024
