Thread by @benryanwriter

Claim of Suicide Surge in Youths on U.K. Wait List for Gender Care Undermined by ‘Cass Review’
🧵: I report for The @NewYorkSun: The report on pediatric gender care also undermines suggestions by @GoodLawProject's @JolyonMaugham that after the Tavistock v Bell decision in Dec. 2021, the UK GIDS pediatric gender clinic all but eliminated gender-transition treatment referrals in 2021 and that this drove a wave of suicides on the waiting list.

nysun.com/article/claim-…

The @GoodLawProject said there was a “huge increase” in suicide deaths in those on the waiting list for the UK's pediatric gender clinic, GIDS. @JolyonMaugham said the clinic’s harsh restrictions, starting in 2021, on treatment access drove the surge.

However, the Cass Review, the recent landmark British report on the care of minors who are distressed about their gender, calls into question the specifics of @JolyonMaugham's claims, as does documentation posted on social media by him. nysun.com/article/claim-…

The @GoodLawProject's @JolyonMaugham claimed, based on whistleblower reports and associated documents, that there was one suicide death among a GIDS patient on the waiting list from 2014 to 2020 and 16 deaths in such patients from 2021 to 2023. nysun.com/article/claim-…

The @GoodLawProject/@JolyonMaugham attributed the 16 suicides to GIDS having “immediately pulled down the shutters” on kids' access to gender-transition treatment following the Bell v Tavistock judgment, which he said caused the waiting list to balloon.

But Cass suggests that at least some of the 16 suicides were in youths who were either non-wait-list GIDS patients or had already turned 18 and aged out. The review's data also counters the suggestion that GIDS all but shut down access to puberty blockers starting in 2021.

“Making assumptions about what has caused any suicide and talking about that assumption in public is known to be dangerous,” said Dr. Anna Hutchinson, a GIDS staffer whistleblower, referring to research indicating suicide can be socially contagious.
nysun.com/article/claim-…

On X, @JolyonMaugham attributed GIDS's new screening policies, adopted in 2021, solely to the Bell v Tavistock ruling. He did not mention that the new system, which added an extra screening layer, was also driven by the Care Quality Commission's scathing report on GIDS.

The pace of endocrinology referrals from GIDS definitely slowed after the Bell judgment, they did not all but grind to a halt as @JolyonMaugham suggested, per data reported in the Cass Review. nysun.com/article/claim-…

The wording of a statement in the Cass Review suggests that @JolyonMaugham of @GoodLawProject was incorrect when he claimed that all 16 apparent recent suicides were minors on the GIDS waiting list. nysun.com/article/claim-…

Screenshots from Tavistock board meetings that @JolyonMaugham posted on X also contradict or otherwise do not support his claim that all 16 apparent recent suicides were in minors on the GIDS waiting list.

A former GIDS whistleblower said: “In clinical work, unless you have full records and follow-up data," noting that GIDS kept very little data, “then to pluck any kind of meaning from clinical incidents, accidents or suicide statistics is of little or no clinical relevance.”

To date, only one study has directly assessed the association between gender-transition treatment and suicide death among young people. The study, which examined comprehensive national health records in Finland, found no such association. nypost.com/2024/02/24/opi…

Systematic literature reviews conducted for Cass's found no conclusive mental health benefits tied to puberty blockers and some moderate-quality evidence suggesting mental health improvements when minors are put on cross-sex hormones for gender distress. nysun.com/article/claim-…

A 2022 paper by Oxford sociologist Michael Biggs found that @JolyonMaugham of @GoodLawProject was incorrect when he claimed there was only one suicide of a minor on the GIDS waiting list from 2014 to 2020. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Trans activist and Harvard Law School clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo @Esqueer has made a "spreadsheet tracking the suicide deaths of trans youth in the UK." It's unclear what overlap this has with what @JolyonMaugham reported, but 5 out of 9 of the deaths were in adults.

I asked Oxford sociologist Michael Biggs about Alejandra Caraballo's list of trans youth suicides in the UK and he said the following:
@Esqueer_

Claim of Suicide Surge in Youths on U.K. Wait List for Gender Care Undermined by ‘Cass Review’
nysun.com/article/claim-…

For @ErinInTheMorn's blog, @MiraLazine credulously reported @JolyonMaugham's claims about recent suicides at GIDS without doing reporting on the details, including the various ways that the Cass Review undermines the specifics of Maugham's claims. erininthemorning.com/p/trans-youth-…