Posted on 08/25/2014 7:45:12 AM PDT by Scoutmaster
The “transgender” craze currently being promoted by the controlled mass media as “the next civil rights frontier” is in fact a mental illness and its promotion is aiding and abetting mental disorders, the former chief psychiatrist for the Johns Hopkins Hospital has said.
Dr. Paul R. McHugh, who is currently Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at the world-famous hospital, also said that sex changes were “biologically impossible” and that those doctors who “promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.”
In addition, he said, “transgenderism is a mental disorder that merits treatment” like society would treat other mental disorders, and it should not be catered to by the media or the medical profession in the way that it is.
Dr. McHugh, who is the author of six books and at least 125 peer-reviewed medical articles, made his remarks in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution”, in which he explained that transgender surgery is not the solution for people who suffer a “disorder of ‘assumption’”—the notion that their maleness or femaleness is different than what nature assigned to them biologically.
In support of his opinion, he pointed to a recent study which showed that the suicide rate among “transgendered” people who had reassignment surgery is 20 times higher than the suicide rate among normal people.
Dr. McHugh also pointed out studies from Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 70–80 percent “spontaneously lost those feelings”—implying that a lot of this “transgenderism” was in fact twisted adults projecting these feelings onto children.
“While the Obama administration, Hollywood, and major media such as Time magazine promote transgenderism as normal,” said Dr. McHugh, these “policy 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 person’s disorder, said Dr. McHugh, is in the person’s “assumption” that they are different than the physical reality of their body, their maleness or femaleness, as assigned by nature.
It is a disorder similar to a “dangerously thin” person suffering anorexia who looks in the mirror and thinks they are “overweight,” said Dr. McHugh.
This assumption, that one’s gender is only in the mind regardless of anatomical reality, has led some transgendered people to push for social acceptance and affirmation of their own subjective “personal truth,” said Dr. McHugh.
As a result, some states—California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—have passed laws barring psychiatrists, “even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor,” he said.
The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70 and 80 percent of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time.
Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “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,” said Dr. McHugh.
The former Johns Hopkins chief of psychiatry also warned against enabling or encouraging certain subgroups of the transgendered, such as young people “susceptible to suggestion from ‘everything is normal’ sex education,” and the schools’ “diversity counselors” who, like “cult leaders,” may “encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery.”
Dr. McHugh also reported that there are “misguided doctors” who, working with very young children who seem to imitate the opposite sex, will administer “puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous—even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.”
Such action comes “close to child abuse,” said Dr. McHugh, given that close to 80 percent of those kids will “abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated.”
“’Sex change’ is biologically impossible,” said McHugh. “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.”
Those of you who can access it may wish to comment on it as well.
All this ‘’change who I was born as’’ comes from Michael Jackson and his plastic surgeries combined with bleaching.
Transgender is definitely a serious, mental illness as is homosexual, lesbian, “gay” or whatever they call it.
The whole “mental illness” thing is a surrender to Freudianism, which was one of the first pseudosciences to attack both public and private morality and declare that there were no moral absolutes. Better to call “transgenderism” what it is.
Likely the former Chief Psychiatrist did not conform to the standards currently in vogue regarding sexuality and nutjobery.
The very latest is a group of folks that refer to them selves only as “softies”
They apparently were also born this way, they just like anything soft.
Transgenderism is difficult to understand. When you talk to a man who is pretending to be a woman, are you talking to a real person, or is it just a ‘Persona’ ? Is the real person a man struggling with femininity, or it the real person the female persona? I really don’t know and can easily get lost trying to make sense of it all.
Of course it is a mental illness.
I have no idea why the far left is so enamored of the idea of treating people with mental illnesses as if they are normal, just because the illness is centered around sexuality.
Clearly, someone claiming to be transgendered has a LOT of issues. One’s gender is a fundamental aspect of one’s being; to reject it is a rejection of self that stops just short of suicide. Pretending that it is normal does not help that person at all.
I would say, from what I have observed of “gays” is that they do not suffer from misdirection of their normal desires, but that they are scared of intimacy with members of the opposite sex. This is just another example of how the left victimizes these people.
True, we do not have instant cures for these conditions. But it is irresponsible and cruel to refuse to try to help them, even with our current less than optimal treatment options.
As is homosexuality, regardless of what the APA says.
“Transgender” is a Mental Illness and Should be Treated as such”
So is being attracted to members of your own sex - but good luck with that!
implying that a lot of this “transgenderism” was in fact twisted adults projecting these feelings onto children.
Yep, just like homosexuals.
I feel strongly both ways...
Yes.
Suppose I didn’t like my ears where they are, and had a “doctor” cut them off and put them somewhere else. I would be immediately known as mentally ill.
But cutting off other parts of the body and throwing them into the trash bin now earns a person the distinction of belonging to America’s latest victim group.
Transgender is the result of anti-Christian brainwashing imo.
If a man can believe he’s a woman. Then he can believe he’s a Fire Engine too.
Very wise, ex-Dem Mom. An excellent analysis.
What would these people say to someone who has schizophrenia and believes that they are hearing demonic voices? Would they tell the person that demons really are talking to them or would they write the person off as a sicko who needs help?
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