Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – republished with permission
Trans Kids Mental Health No Better Despite Dangerous Drug Treatment
The following is republished with permission from AbleChild.
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, one of the nation’s leading advocates for gender-affirming care to kids, refuses to release a ten-million-dollar taxpayer-funded study because the results don’t support continued trans-medical intervention. However, full disclosure is necessary for the trans community to make important life decisions.
The nine-year study, bought and paid for by hard-working Americans, essentially revealed that after receiving puberty blockers, the mental health of these young children did not improve. This is important information because these children most certainly were diagnosed with some mental illness prior to being seen for gender dysphoria (the belief that one’s body is the wrong sex), another psychiatric diagnosis.
Dr. Olson-Kennedy has refused to release the study because she believes it could be “weaponized” and used as proof that “we shouldn’t use blockers.” The puberty blocker “treatments” supposedly delays physical development, so the body feels more like the gender identified with.
What the Olson-Kennedy study revealed was that despite being on puberty blockers, the kids were no better off with their mental health. In a nutshell, kids thought they’d be happy if they could be the sex they identified with, but, in fact, this was not reflected in the study. After two years, despite the treatment, there was no significant improvement in the kid’s mental health.
For those of us who follow psychiatric drugging, it is of interest that the research data are being withheld because too often these studies fail to consider the psychiatric drugging that occurred prior to the request for transition “treatment.” In other words, how many of these kids have been on psychiatric mind-altering drugs prior to feeling the need to transition? What psychiatric diagnoses were involved and what drugs were prescribed prior to the child’s belief that becoming another sex would be more in line with what they identify with? We may never know if the Olson-Kennedy study even considered psychiatric drug use prior to trans-treatments. It matters.
It’s no secret that psychiatric drugs can elicit strong adverse reactions, especially in children. For example, let’s consider Nashville school shooter, Audrey Hale. Hale had been receiving psychiatric “treatment” for twenty of her twenty-eight years and Hale had been prescribed cocktails of psychiatric drugs. So, what role did the psychiatric drugs play in Hale’s desire to transition? Further, did Hale receive puberty blockers and psychiatric drugs as a cocktail of “treatment?” It’s anyone’s guess at this point as Hale’s extensive mental health records have not been made publicly available. Do we see a pattern of data withholding among the trans-medical community?
While Dr. Olson-Kennedy may get away with withholding taxpayer funded research, the cat is already out of the bag. To date there are no long-term studies that prove safety or efficacy of puberty blockers for transgender-believing youth. There is no informed consent if this “treatment” is experimental. And there is a well-supported argument that puberty blockers cause mental illnesses, including the package insert for Lupron, the number one prescribed puberty blocker in America, listing “emotional instability” as a side effect.
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) have come out against transgender interventions including a statement about the mental health of those children subjected to the “treatments” explaining “past studies have documented multiple psychiatric problems with similar high doses of anabolic steroids like testosterone such that 23% of subjects met DSM criteria for a major mood syndrome such as mania, hypomania and major depression.”
ACPeds further explained “many medical organizations around the world, including the Australian College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners in the United Kingdom and the Swedish National Council for Medical Ethics have characterized these interventions in children as experimental and dangerous.” According to world renowned Swedish psychiatrist Dr. Christopher Gillberg, pediatric transition “is possibly one of the greatest scandals in medical history,” calling for “an immediate moratorium on the use of puberty blocker drugs because of their unknown long-term effects.”
Lupron was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of prostate cancer and management of endometriosis but has been discontinued by pharmaceutical giant AbbVie due to lack of demand and newer alternatives. However, the FDA also had more than 25,000 adverse event reports for Lupron products including suicidal thoughts, emotional lability, mood changes, delusions, agitation, altered mental status, mood swings, stroke, muscle atrophy, debilitating bone, and joint pain and more than 1500 deaths.
To date, the FDA has not approved any puberty blockers for use on children who believe they are transgender. Rather, doctors, like Olson-Kennedy, prescribe drugs “OFF-LABEL” fully unaware of what the long-term side effects may be on the “treated” children. Zoladex, Supprelin, Trelstar are brand names for some of the drugs approved for illnesses other than gender dysphoria and all of which carry similar serious side effects including emotional lability, depression, and psychotic disorder.
Now, add to this experimental drug mix the cocktails of psychiatric drugs already being taken by those experiencing questions about their sexuality and suddenly real mental health problems begin to arise. What Olson-Kennedy has done by hiding the study is simply support the ever-growing belief that, no matter the trans-medical/pharmaceutical interventions, no one with mental health issues is getting better. No one. And, more importantly, it should be made abundantly clear that Dr. Olson-Kennedy will never receive a dime of taxpayer funding again. The taxpayers are not in the business of providing funds to only be told they are not worthy of knowing the results they paid for.
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