You’d think child psychiatrists would want to help troubled children, and you’d be right. But the medical association that represents these doctors is suppressing open discussion of the best care for gender-distressed adolescents.
Respectful discourse among doctors regarding treatment of vulnerable children should trump emotions, personal opinions and politics.
Yet our foiled attempt to invite physician input on gender interventions suggests that ideology is winning the day.
At first, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry approved a request by our organization, Do No Harm, to run a booth at its annual conference next week. But AACAP last month turned around and revoked that approval.
We simply wanted to give doctors a chance to discuss the dangers of transgender treatments for children, just as we did in May at the American Psychiatric Association conference.
These discussions are important because medical organizations like AACAP continue to trumpet support for gender interventions that mounting evidence shows are potentially harmful.
Meanwhile, the same organizations ignore the increasing number of patients who regret their transitions.
They offer no guidance on how to best treat those seeking to detransition, wean them off hormones or receive hormone replacement for surgically removed sex organs.
In fact, our health-care system treats patients who buck the gender-ideology narrative as nonexistent: The system has no diagnosis codes to allow for tracking and research of this poorly understood population.
They are a lost cohort with medical and psychological needs that have been shunned by the medical establishment.
And now we’ve been shunned too.
Hellbound and Down 