1./ A thread about conversion therapy, gender identity and the elephant in the room : mental health. It's remarkable how in the debate on 'gender identity' there's such a stubborn refusal to consider the power and fragility of the human mind. Here's why that's dangerous.
2./ If you haven't read 'Sleeping Beauties' I can reccomend this extraordinary new book that explores how stress and cultural influence can trigger medical conditions which, on the surface, seem baffling; like 169 girls in Sweden falling into 'comas'.👇theguardian.com/books/2021/apr…
3./ Except coma isn't the right word. The girls were all from refugee families, and almost all from the ex-USSR or Iraq. Many were Yazidi. Some of the families had been through hell. For 2 decades girls fell asleep and didn't wake for months or years.👇bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-…
4./ Critics accused families of faking it which is why local doctors were keen for the author, Suzanne O'Sullivan, a neurologist, to study them. The evidence quickly suggested a 'functional neurological disorder' (FND) or something we used to call psychosomatic.
5./ Psychosomosis gets a bad rap; as if doctors are saying it isn't real. But psychosomatic symptoms ARE real. The girls were also an example of an MPI, a 'mass psychogenic illness' where groups of similar people suffer similar symptoms with no obvious physical basis.
6./ But don't run away with the idea conditions like these only happen to girls. In 2016 adult male diplomats in the US embassy in Havana began to fall ill from what they believed were mysterious attacks with a powerful sonic weapon.👇vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/t…
7./ It started when a guy heard a buzzing so strong he had to close the windows and doors and turn up the TV. Over the next few months dozens of others experienced the same, suffering chronic headaches, vomiting and stupor. So what was the truth? 👇theguardian.com/world/2019/nov…
8./ US diplomats were withdrawn, putting Cuban relations into the cold-freeze all because guys had become convinced they were being targetted. They weren't. The power of the mind had "spread" a condition through a peer group who became equally convinced they were suffering.
9./ Why does this matter? If we are to believe the proponents of gender identity the 4000+ % increase in girls being diagnosed with gender dysphoria has NOTHING to do with this sort of culturally influenced psychogenetic illness. Maybe they are right.👇 telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/…
10./ While it can't explain all of the rise, if you really cared about kids wouldn't you at least consider it could be an amplifying factor? Wouldn't you want research? Instead these activists are doubling down. Affirmation is the only answer, they say. 👇theguardian.com/us-news/2021/m…
11./ The confused campaign for a ban on so-called Conversion Therapy claims failure to affirm a child's 'gender identity' is somehow an attempt at conversion. This insightful interview by @darrengrimes_ of @JamesEsses explains why that's nonsense. audioboom.com/posts/7845908-…
12./ As James says no therapist nowadays would set out to change someone's sexual orientation or 'gender identity'. That's why affirmation shouldn't be compulsory or the only option. Therapists need to be able to explore the reasons why a child believes what he or she does.
13./ A factor in some outbreaks of 'mass psychogenetic illness' is severe stress that can lead individuals in a peer group subconsciously to view their condition as an escape or coping response. We know lots of school-age girls are under huge stress.👇 bbc.co.uk/news/uk-565664…
14./ Swedish refugee kids who were uncertain about their future and feared going back to appalling conditions in Iraq closed down their bodies. Couldn't some girls in highly sexualised school cultures respond by denying their female-ness? Who knows? Isn't it worth research?
15./ We're told a child's anxiety disappears when they are affirmed. But again this simplistic approach fails to take into consideration the power of the mind. What do you think happened when a very common form of knee surgery was tested against placebo? nytimes.com/2014/10/07/ups…
16./ The results for those who had placebo surgery (only an incision was made) were identical to those who got the popular surgery. It turns out we can sometimes will ourselves well if we're convinced a procedure (like puberty blockers?) or even surgery WILL transform our lives.
17./ The experiment on knee surgery was more recently extended to one of the most common surgical procedures in the Western world: keyhole surgery on 'impinged' shoulders. 21 000 are carried out every year in the UK. Turns out placebo surgery is as good.👇sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/…
18./ The human mind is complex and often baffling and the connection between the mind and the body still full of mysteries. The idea the state should march into the therapy room with simplistic rules about what therapists must say or do is not just philistine, it's dangerous.
19./ Once therapists are told they must affirm where will that end? It was my experience working on a BBC Horizon 20 years ago that convinced me we must be careful about the pressure to affirm identities. The show was about people who believed they were meant to be amputees.👇
20./ It was Britain's leading expert on transsexuality Russell Reid who argued it was ethical to remove healthy limbs from these people and a Scottish surgeon did just that, amputating a leg. Reid said the procedure would make him "happy". Like that shoulder surgery did?🤷♂️👇
21./ Waiting in the wings are other 'identities' that argue therapy should do nothing but affirm them. There are growing numbers of people who argue they are Plurals or multiple personalities, many with different genders. Must all their gender identities be affirmed?👇
22./ Once we start telling therapists how they must treat their patients, and threatening them with criminal sanctions if they don't affirm, what then? We might open them up to complaints (or even claims) from clients like this that felt they hadn't been affirmed enough.👇
23./ Of course this will be dismissed as exaggerated. But then if you'd told the average person 10 or even 5 years ago that in some school classes a third of girls would identify as trans or non-binary they would have dismissed that too. So what should we do?
24./ The human mind is extraordinary. Our policy towards therapy should reflect that. We should empower therapists to freely explore clients' experiences with respect and curiosity not enforce some mechanistic one size fits all approach backed by the power of the criminal law.
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