(PatriotWise.com) – After a 67 percent increase in referrals in less than two years, there are now nearly 8,000 children on the waiting list for England’s gender identity service and seeking surgeries to change one’s gender, a statistic that experts say is compelling proof of social contagion.
The National Health Service (NHS) quietly released the updated statistics late in 2022, showing that “7,696 children and young people are on the waiting list” for a first appointment, up from 4,600 in 2020.
The NHS is rushing to establish regional centers to take the place of the Tavistock gender clinic, which will soon be shut down after it was determined earlier this year that it was “not a safe or viable option” for children and adolescents experiencing gender-related distress. The regional centers will primarily concentrate on providing this vulnerable population with psychotherapeutic support, and they are only expected to provide medical intervention—such as puberty blockers—in the most stringent clinical trial settings.
The founder of the organization Transgender Trend, Stephanie Davies-Arai, said that she thinks social contagion contributes to this explosion in numbers. Transgender Trend has been at the forefront of the campaign for evidence-based care of gender-confused children.
The sudden increase in referrals coincides with pandemic lockdowns, which isolated kids and teenagers and caused many of them to spend a lot of time online.
Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Yale University considered the foremost authority on social contagions, concurred earlier this year that there is a significant component of social contagion when it comes to people identifying as transgender.
In 2020, the NHS requested an impartial review of its pediatric gender service. The controversial Tavistock clinic has been shut down after an interim report released earlier this year revealed severe shortcomings in treating children and teenagers with gender dysphoria.
The report drew attention to the sharp rise in referrals, the change in the gender ratio from a preponderance of young boys to a preponderance of adolescent girls, and the fact that about one-third of the young people were autistic or neurodiverse. The movement to adopt the affirmative model of care, which mandated that clinicians ignore their patients’ complex mental health needs and concentrate only on gender, also causes concern.
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