The specialist youth and adolescent arm of the nation’s peak psychiatry college is pushing for national guidelines on the care of young people with gender distress and gender dysphoria as doctors around the country say they feel muzzled and fearful of expressing professional views on gender medicine.The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry bi-national committee held an extraordinary meeting this week to discuss member concerns over the provision of services for young people presenting with gender dysphoria and incongruence.
“During this meeting, some members expressed their hesitancy to discuss gender issues or raise concerns and raised the importance of robust, evidence-based debate,” according to a communique issued after the meeting and sent to psychiatrists. The committee unanimously agreed to support any psychiatrist or trainee to raise concerns during the course of their employment about any aspect of practice.
Some child psychiatrists at the meeting, which was called in the wake of gender-critical Queensland psychiatrist Jillian Spencer being stood down from clinical duties, expressed concerns about the lack of evidence underpinning medicalised affirmative care of young people with gender incongruence, and uncertainty over whether treating such children with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones reduced mental distress.
This issue is the subject of fierce international debate as paediatric specialists at the front line of gender medicine from six countries challenged the global Endocrine Society’s claims that gender-affirming care improves the wellbeing of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide. The international experts, in an extraordinary public letter, said the claim was not supported by the best available evidence. . . .
The 21 clinicians in the WSJ letter said, in view of significant risks, that doctors internationally are recommending psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgeries as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth.