CNN ran a story Thursday on the parents of a transgender-identifying teen “fleeing” Florida that repeated debunked claims that bans on sex changes would lead to “trans kids” dying.
“When the Florida Board of Medicine started meeting, we realized that they were going to ban gender-affirming care for kids, that we might need to leave. Because that is lifesaving essential medicine and treatment for our daughter,” the child’s mother said in the CNN segment.
“There was times before she started getting hormones that she was suicidal. But after she transitioned she was much more outgoing, much more comfortable with herself,” the father said. (RELATED: Michigan Bans Mental Health Professionals From Questioning A Patient’s Gender Identity)
Transgender advocates often claim that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries prevent suicide in gender dysphoric youth. Medical professionals also frequently tell parents of gender dysphoric children to choose between a “dead daughter or a living son” (or vice versa).
Many of the studies used to back up this claim are funded by pharmaceutical companies and activist groups, psychiatrists pointed out to the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) in December. Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist, said that the results of these studies tend to the biased since they are based off voluntary answers from respondents, meaning those who are more passionate about the issue are more likely to respond.
“Excessive focus on an exaggerated suicide risk narrative by clinicians and the media may create a damaging … ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ effect … whereby suicidality in these vulnerable youths may be further exacerbated,” another psychiatrist told the DCNF.
These statistics also tend to diminish the effects of other comordibities — such as depression or eating disorders — on a patient’s risk of suicide, another psychiatrist said.
“I never thought that I would have to flee a state.”
This family of four living in suburban Florida shares why they are packing up to leave. pic.twitter.com/JSnrzNjeCp
— CNN (@CNN) July 26, 2023
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a study claiming to find that taking cross-sex hormones had a positive impact on patients’ mental health. While depression and anxiety did slightly decline among study participants, 11 patients developed suicidal ideation and two patients committed suicide during the study. The study also lacked a control group and found no mental health benefits for biological males.
Two Dutch studies that provide much of the basis for the way transgender medicine is practiced in the United States are methodologically flawed, some medical professionals have argued. The studies, published in 2011 and 2015, tracked dozens of adolescents as they received puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries. Their conclusion was that such treatments drastically lowered a patient’s feelings of gender dysphoria.
But a peer-reviewed study published in January pokes holes in the methodologies and conclusions of these Dutch studies. Participants in the study were offered other mental health care, making it impossible to determine whether the mental health therapy or the sex-change treatments caused the decrease in gender dysphoria.
Researchers also included only “best case scenario” patients in the studies. For instance, of the 111 patients who took puberty blockers, only 70 of those were chosen to go on to receive cross-sex hormones. The peer-reviewed critique found that those who had second-thoughts about their transition were delayed in the transition process, meaning only the most convinced went on to take hormones.
A physician at a children’s hospital that offers sex changes anonymously told journalist Chris Rufo in June 2023 that affirming a child’s “gender identity” often causes, rather than prevents, suicide.