Posted on 05/11/2015 10:47:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Greg referenced this article by Paul McHugh (former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital) on the show Tuesday, and it's worth posting an excerpt here, as well:
[P]olicy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight….
Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry's domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field….
We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.
It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription….
At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. "Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.
Listen to what Greg had to say here (starts at 1:24:40).
Absolutely true, and howling non-PC!
Excellent distillation of the issue...
Basically, you can change the upholstery and some of the more obvious furnishings, but the original ‘person’ is still there inside, and has not changed like the exterior.
Common sense --- finally. No matter how many hormones you take, or how radical the surgery; you are the sex you were born. As for the suicide rates, I have been saying for years that if you really cared about these people, you would not allow this surgery to go on. Perhaps those of us who oppose this are the ones who are truly caring about the person involved.
The old joke on Michael Jackson was that ‘Only in America can a handsome young black man grow up to be an ugly old white woman.’
My point is that they’ll find some “expert” from some obscure hole in the wall and parade him as their counterbalance. You’re right, I probably should have said some Masshole or Ivy Lisper.
There is no such thing as “sex-reassignment”. Hormones, chemicals, surgical mutilation and ignoring mental illness is not sex reassignment.
It is nice to see some movement on a subject that has been mired in 1950’s psychology. It is interesting that a such a “disease” that requires such drastic mutilation, has not been researched using post-millennial tools and techniques. When someone is “diagnosed” as transgender where are the CAT scans, MRIs, blood work, DNA work and other diagnostic techniques that would search for biological causation? None.
Where are the psychological diagnostic instruments that would confirm or deny? None.
Where are the trials of antipsychotics, antianxiety agents and psychotherapy to test the contents of the patient’s beliefs? None.
Where is the research about diagnostic decisions trees that include biological paradigms? None.
Where are the men and women running to doctors and psychiatrists upset that they feel like they are of another gender? None
Instead we are told that the patient makes the diagnosis. Because they have felt like the opposite sex from their DNA since they can remember. Not accounting for the fact that in delusional processes, the past is incorporated in the delusions i.e.: when I treat the secretary who thinks she is the Queen of England, although her delusional onset may be recent (within a matter of months or days, at times) her delusions will include memories of being a child-queen, for acute delusional processes are often seamless.
Parents who arrive at schools and clinics with children dressed and raised as their DNA opposites are hailed as brave instead of studied as classic cases of Munchhausen by Proxy where parents seek attention by making up and believing the child is different, ill or diseased and providing symptoms and evidence to back the parent’s need.
McHugh is doing a service by raising these important issues in a world blinded by political correctness that engenders fear
“Soon VA hospitals will perform these surgeries on tax payer dimes...”
I know for a fact that this is already happening.
They no longer perform an addadictome?
Give it 20 years. It will no longer be a mental disorder and some Justice like Anthony Kennedy will demand the disorder be celebrated or else.
+1
“My point is that theyll find some expert from some obscure hole in the wall and parade him as their counterbalance.”
And the evilstream media will laud him as the second coming of Isaac Newton. Isn’t there something that can be done about the constant tsunami of disinformation?
“Youre right, I probably should have said some Masshole or Ivy Lisper.”
No big deal.
I read somewhere that many Americans deduct 15 points from their estimates of a person’s IQ for a Southern accent. This is useful when employing the old “come on and underestimate me” strategy, but allowing people to overestimate their own intelligence has its drawbacks.
America would do better to listen to Southern conservatives and kick the nattering classes to the curb, but the Massholes and Ivy Lispers just *sound* smarter—to people who talk like they do, anyway.
I think there was a Simpsons episode about that.
Bingo.
“It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one.”
It amazes me to see an Island of sanity in a Sea of PC. How did this happen?
Look at the articles coming out spring 2015 on “the war on trans-kids”, where they are saying that if your son decides he’s your daughter, gosh, darn it, we need to put him in a dress, change his name, give hormones to inhibit puberty and ignore the 70-80% of kids who have that idea and abandon it for reality.
Source: Paul McHugh’s article in the Wall Street Journal, on why the first hospital to do transgender surgeries stopped
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120
Without wading through the article myself, do they address the question I raised about things they did 50 or 60 years ago?
The article doesn’t address the type of therapy they received prior to counseling to prep for sexual changes.
Here it comes—national transgender day or maybe it will be national glbt day. Prepare for it— store adds on tv, greeting cards etc.
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