On Wednesday night, Channel 4 broadcast a much-debated documentary examining the staggering rise in children being referred for consultation on gender re-assignment. In the last nine years, referrals for children to the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service have risen some 2500 per cent.
The presenter of the film, psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, recalled her childhood struggle with gender dysphoria. She had been a girl who wanted to be a boy, and remembers feeling distressed at this. Eventually, these feelings subsided and Stella felt comfortable with her sex and went on to be a mother.
Stories like this raise concern that hundreds of children are being pushed into inappropriate and unnecessary treatments that they will later abandon – albeit it not without some psychological distress and, potentially, lifelong infertility. There’s also the worry that many of these children will be suffering from underlying mental health issues, which will not be addressed by gender re-assignment.
So what’s behind this rise in referrals? Part of the reason is that today’s gender non-confirming children are receiving very different messages from those in Stella’s day.
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