Medical Mutilation Is Not the Answer to Gender Confusion

Conducted in Finland and published in the medical journal, European Psychiatry, the large study reviewed records of 3,665 people registered with Finland’s “nationally centralized gender identity services” from 1996 to 2019. Using Finland’s socialized medical system, the researchers were able to survey the country’s entire population to assemble a control group. They matched every person receiving “gender identity services” with eight other people of the same sex and age resulting in a control group of more than 29,000 people. The researchers compared the mental health needs of the two groups both before and after the gender-confused person’s first appointment with gender identity services (GIS). The authors made several key findings:

• People with gender confusion received more “specialist-level psychiatric treatment” for mental health issues both before and after their first GIS appointment than generally needed by the non-gender confused control group.

• While 15.3 percent of people who received hormone treatments or gender reassignment surgeries had psychiatric treatment before the procedures, 52.9 percent needed psychiatric treatment afterwards.

• Among people who had already received mental health treatment before their first GIS appointment, 70 to 80 percent of them still needed treatment afterward, regardless of whether they underwent hormone treatments or gender reassignment surgeries.

• The most common underlying mental health issues in both groups were severe mood disorders and anxiety beginning during childhood.

The authors concluded that people with gender confusion had “many more common psychiatric needs” than the general population even after receiving GIS and surgical interventions. These findings are consistent with other peer-reviewed research that suggest mutilating surgeries do not improve mental health. These recent studies have found a correlation between gender confusion and other mental health disorders connected with childhood trauma (physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, etc.), and that these surgical interventions fail to address these issues leading to increased suicide rates while leaving as high as 83 percent of people feeling lonelier and almost 50 percent dissatisfied with their lives after surgery.

In a 2021 study at the University of Pittsburgh, medical researchers found that gender-confused adolescents had a significantly higher likelihood to report childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, and psychological abuse than their non-gender confused peers. In a similar study at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Australia, scientists found that gender confusion “in children arises in association with…high rates of unresolved loss and trauma,” such as sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence. The study also indicated 87 percent of children in the study who had gender confusion also had anxiety, behavioral disorders, or autism.

In a study published in May 2023, researchers at the University of Hamburg Medical Center concluded “…people, who have undergone gender reassignment surgery [generally] feel lonelier” than others who have not had surgery. In a subsequent study also published in May 2023 by the same researchers, 44 percent of people reported varying levels of dissatisfaction with their lives after irreversible surgeries where 30.1 percent reported “slight” satisfaction and only 1.1 percent reported extreme satisfaction.

These studies are also consistent with a 2011 study conducted in Sweden, which found “substantially higher rates” of suicide, suicide attempts, and psychiatric hospitalizations in gender-confused individuals receiving surgical interventions compared to a healthy control population.

In July 2023, a group of 21 doctors and medical researchers from nine countries – Finland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, Switzerland, South Africa, and the United States – issued a letter stating that these treatments and procedures present little evidence for improving mental health.

In the letter, the doctors noted the “unfortunate” nature of how politicized health care for gender confusion has become, and recommended medical societies begin to align with the “best evidence available” which shows mental health therapy should be the “first line of treatment” for gender confusion. The doctors concluded there is “no reliable evidence” that these treatments are effective in improving mental health.

According to ACPeds, a national medical association in the United States, data shows up to 88 percent of girls and up to 98 percent of boys with gender confusion “will desist” when counseling is “directed toward underlying psychological issues.”

Yet, the “gender surgery industry,” which is expected to grow to a $5 billion industry by 2030, continues to surgically mutilate children and adults while ignoring this growing amount of research and data.