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 Isnt the Solution, in which he explained that transgender surgery is not the solution for people who suffer a disorder of assumptionthe 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 Londons Portman Clinic of children who had expressed transgender feelings but for whom, over time, 7080 percent spontaneously lost those feelingsimplying 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 mistakenit does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
The transgendered persons disorder, said Dr. McHugh, is in the persons 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 ones 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 statesCalifornia, New Jersey, and Massachusettshave 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 didnt 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 onerouseven though the drugs stunt the childrens 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.
for later
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.