“she wouldn’t force kids into a mental health exam before giving them insulin, so why would she make that a prerequisite for youth gender medicine?”
This is obnoxious from a supposed medical professional. The answer is obvious: because gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and type 1 diabetes isn’t.
“she wouldn’t force kids into a mental health exam before giving them insulin, so why would she make that a prerequisite for youth gender medicine?”
This is obnoxious from a supposed medical professional. The answer is obvious: because gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and type 1 diabetes isn’t.
Now before somebody runs off to Twitter cancel me, I understand why there are lots of social reasons why the average person would be uncomfortable with calling gender (or “chest”) dysphoria mental illness in casual conversation, and I don’t make a habit of running around calling trans people “mentally ill”. And I’m totally open to the idea that in at least some cases, the best treatment for gender dysphoria might be surgical transition.
But the reality is that by any definition that is remotely consistent, gender dysphoria is, medically speaking, a mental illness. And any medical professional needs to be cognizant of that and be willing to turn the best efforts of modern mental health care on the subject. To not do so is negligence.
“Trust the experts” only applies if the experts are willing to behave like experts, and that includes things like “doing the scientific method, not pantomiming it for activism”.
“This is obnoxious from a supposed medical professional. The answer is obvious: because gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and type 1 diabetes isn’t.”
The duplicity these people employ is beyond insane.
Part of the problem here is the complete breakdown in the ability of large part of the media (including our host; sorry, Jesse!) and medical profession to make the 100% accurate observation that being transgendered is a reality-denying psychiatric condition and proceed accordingly. That shouldn't even be controversial; it's *literally* what a declaration of believing you were "born in the wrong body" is! What someone needs to do is analyze the history of how the media and medical profession became so completely disarmed from dealing with this particular reality-denying psychiatric condition as compared to, say, paranoid schizophrenia, as it seems to have been the thin edge of the wedge on a lot of other issues these days.
Yeah if you don't want to call it a mental illness it's at least mental health related. I wouldn't necessarily call the moderate anxiety I occasionally take some benzos for a mental illness either, but it's certainly a mental health related issue. Same thing with ADD maybe it's not really a clear mental *illness* the way schizophrenia is but it's certainly related to mental health.
I experience more anxiety than the average person in certain situations and there's a extremely effective solution for that in benzos as long as you're capable of only taking them occasionally. My psychiatrist agrees that as long as a patient can take a medication responsibly it's not necessary that they be suffering life destroying consequences to be treated for it. Some other psychiatrists see it differently and will only write benzos in cases of extreme acute panic attacks or Generalized Anxiety Disorder so bad you're not leaving the house. Of course these same docs have zero issue throwing SSRIs at every single person who walks through the door so it's not really principled about meeting the conditions of the mental illness it's just being stingy with benzos, which I agree they should be careful with, but if you write someone a script for 10 Ativan and they don't ask for a refill until 4 months later I think it's pretty safe so say they're not abusing the meds.
Yeah, that comment is really frustrating. If you don't give some one insulin who is diabetic they will get sick and die. But you wouldn't just give insulin to someone who walked in off the street without a prescription and said 'I think I'm diabetic, give me insulin', because giving insulin to a non-diabetic will hurt them. You wouldn't give ritalin to someone without actually figuring out if they suffer from ADD and you wouldn't give anti-depressants to someone unless you determined they were depressed etc. and needed them.
There's this bizarre desire see hormones/surgery as life saving care and yet also somehow not a medical decision at all. I notice we don't even say 'sex-change' any more.
“she wouldn’t force kids into a mental health exam before giving them insulin, so why would she make that a prerequisite for youth gender medicine?”
This is obnoxious from a supposed medical professional. The answer is obvious: because gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and type 1 diabetes isn’t.
Now before somebody runs off to Twitter cancel me, I understand why there are lots of social reasons why the average person would be uncomfortable with calling gender (or “chest”) dysphoria mental illness in casual conversation, and I don’t make a habit of running around calling trans people “mentally ill”. And I’m totally open to the idea that in at least some cases, the best treatment for gender dysphoria might be surgical transition.
But the reality is that by any definition that is remotely consistent, gender dysphoria is, medically speaking, a mental illness. And any medical professional needs to be cognizant of that and be willing to turn the best efforts of modern mental health care on the subject. To not do so is negligence.
“Trust the experts” only applies if the experts are willing to behave like experts, and that includes things like “doing the scientific method, not pantomiming it for activism”.
Heck, you can go even more agnostic and just say “because there’s no blood test for chest dysphoria.”
“This is obnoxious from a supposed medical professional. The answer is obvious: because gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and type 1 diabetes isn’t.”
The duplicity these people employ is beyond insane.
Part of the problem here is the complete breakdown in the ability of large part of the media (including our host; sorry, Jesse!) and medical profession to make the 100% accurate observation that being transgendered is a reality-denying psychiatric condition and proceed accordingly. That shouldn't even be controversial; it's *literally* what a declaration of believing you were "born in the wrong body" is! What someone needs to do is analyze the history of how the media and medical profession became so completely disarmed from dealing with this particular reality-denying psychiatric condition as compared to, say, paranoid schizophrenia, as it seems to have been the thin edge of the wedge on a lot of other issues these days.
Yeah if you don't want to call it a mental illness it's at least mental health related. I wouldn't necessarily call the moderate anxiety I occasionally take some benzos for a mental illness either, but it's certainly a mental health related issue. Same thing with ADD maybe it's not really a clear mental *illness* the way schizophrenia is but it's certainly related to mental health.
I experience more anxiety than the average person in certain situations and there's a extremely effective solution for that in benzos as long as you're capable of only taking them occasionally. My psychiatrist agrees that as long as a patient can take a medication responsibly it's not necessary that they be suffering life destroying consequences to be treated for it. Some other psychiatrists see it differently and will only write benzos in cases of extreme acute panic attacks or Generalized Anxiety Disorder so bad you're not leaving the house. Of course these same docs have zero issue throwing SSRIs at every single person who walks through the door so it's not really principled about meeting the conditions of the mental illness it's just being stingy with benzos, which I agree they should be careful with, but if you write someone a script for 10 Ativan and they don't ask for a refill until 4 months later I think it's pretty safe so say they're not abusing the meds.
Yeah, that comment is really frustrating. If you don't give some one insulin who is diabetic they will get sick and die. But you wouldn't just give insulin to someone who walked in off the street without a prescription and said 'I think I'm diabetic, give me insulin', because giving insulin to a non-diabetic will hurt them. You wouldn't give ritalin to someone without actually figuring out if they suffer from ADD and you wouldn't give anti-depressants to someone unless you determined they were depressed etc. and needed them.
There's this bizarre desire see hormones/surgery as life saving care and yet also somehow not a medical decision at all. I notice we don't even say 'sex-change' any more.