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(LifeSiteNews) – New evidence is dismantling the left’s dangerous transgender ideology.
A report written by an epidemiologist consultant to the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) and published by ACPeds last month found “compelling evidence” for treating gender dysphoria with therapy, rather than drugs and surgery, after reviewing more than a dozen studies.
“For decades, many of transgenderism’s researchers and clinicians have promoted a false ideology: if a man, woman or child claims to be a member of the opposite sex or expresses a keen desire to ‘change sex’ through hormonal and surgical intervention, then there is nothing one can do but ‘affirm’ or facilitate that person’s belief and desire,” the report said.
“A key component of this ideology is that psychotherapeutic interventions have been tried exhaustively in such patients and that nothing worked.”
“In reality, none of this is true,” the report stated. “The truth is that many clinicians have offered psychotherapy and behavioral therapies to help their patients with identity disturbances fixated on ‘gender’ or ‘change of sex,’ and often with success.”
The report noted that, decades after the emergence of “gender medicine,” “there has never yet been even one rigorous study comparing the use of psychotherapy in patients with gender dysphoria to any kind of control condition.”
The epidemiologist, who chose to remain anonymous, nevertheless identified 15 studies that recorded results of psychotherapeutic or behavioral approaches used to help patients overcome gender dysphoria.
The studies involved participants ranging from age 12 to late adulthood, with methods including psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and group therapy. One small, successful study used cognitive behavioral therapy, which the report described as the current “global standard in psychotherapy.”
Results from the 15 studies were overwhelmingly positive. “All studies reported complete or mixed success in resolving the ‘gender’ or ‘transsexual’ troubles of their participants,” according to the ACPeds report. “No studies reported only failure.”
Seventy-six of 103 patients (73 percent) for whom definite outcomes were recorded came to terms with their biological sex over the course of treatment. “Given the positive results of these studies, most of which used old-fashioned types of psychotherapy, there is every reason to believe that these patients can be helped to resolve their ‘gender’ identity problems,” the report concluded.
“There is compelling evidence to suggest that psychotherapy may be efficacious in treating gender dysphoria. Psychologists should offer cognitive behavioral therapy-based care to patients presenting with ‘gender’ concerns, and other clinicians should refer these patients for such care.”
The findings of the ACPeds report correspond with a wide body of literature that demonstrates the transient nature of gender confusion, particularly in children and adolescents.
According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, up to 88% of girls and 97.8% of boys grow out of gender dysphoria by adulthood. Studies on the outcomes of gender-confused kids have consistently found that the vast majority do not persist in gender disorders beyond adolescence.
Practices that “affirm” illusory, so-called “transgender identities” are “based on smoke and mirrors” and have “resulted in many harms,” the ACPeds report said.
“The ‘affirmative’ model of care for patients with ‘gender’ identity disturbances essentially fast-tracks vulnerable people into a life dependent on exogenous hormone supplementation and surgical after-care, without helping them resolve their underlying psychological issues.”
Though virtually all young gender dysphoric patients often come to accept their sex, as many as 100 percent continue along a path of devastating medical interventions, like cross-sex hormones, when “affirmed” with puberty suppression.
Puberty-blocking drugs risk “serious permanent side effects including osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment” and sterility, while cross-sex hormones put youth at increased risk of “heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan,” according to ACPeds. Research also shows that hormones drugs for gender dysphoria typically lead to permanent, mutilating surgery, like the amputation of reproductive organs.
“There is not a single long-term study to demonstrate the safety or efficacy of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for transgender-believing youth,” ACPeds has said. “The suppression of normal puberty, the use of disease-causing cross-sex hormones and the surgical mutilation and sterilization of children constitute atrocities to be banned, not healthcare.”
Two dozen states have nevertheless ignored the science and banned therapy to correct gender dysphoria in recent years, as state lawmakers increasingly cave to dictates of the radical LGBT lobby, according to The American Spectator.
“Minnesota became the 24th state just last week,” The American Spectator reported in July. “This means that it is illegal for a psychologist to help a person overcome his or her gender dysphoria.”