A decade ago, the number of children seeking treatment for gender dysphoria was small. Victoria’s Royal Children’s Hospital’s gender clinic – the largest in the nation – was treating just over 100 patients in 2014. By the end of last year, its patient numbers had swelled to about 1100, 674 of them girls. Fifty-six of those children were on puberty blockers and 49 had been prescribed cross-sex hormones. Perth Children’s Hospital was treating 597 children last year, 433 of them girls.
Around the world, a reassessment is taking place of the dominant model of gender-affirming medicine. UK pediatricians raised concerns that doctors at London’s Tavistock Clinic were failing to undertake comprehensive assessments and healthcare of vulnerable children and last year the clinic was ordered to close. Britain is moving towards using puberty blockers and cross sex hormones only in the context of clinical trials.NSW senior physicians have also voiced misgivings, with the leaders of Westmead Children’s Hopsital’s gender clinic questioning in a recent academic paper whether the explosion of young people experiencing gender distress – particularly when it was late-onset, emerging only in adolescence – was driven in part by so-called social contagion.
Source: Trans kids and their families lost in maze of gender ideology anguish | The Australian