UK: Parents of three-year-olds ‘took their children to clinic claiming they were trans when they just wanted a child of a different sex’, psychiatrist says
Parents of children as young as three were fabricating stories that their toddlers were transgender, a former psychiatrist at the Tavistock child gender clinic claims.
Dr Az Hakeem worked at the controversial NHS clinic for 12 years until 2012 and said he expressed concerns the procedures followed by staff ‘were mad’, describing Tavistock as a ‘transing factory’.
‘You had three-year-olds coming in… I saw these parents who had a son but wanted a daughter or the other way around… the parents were saying ”Johnny never looked like a boy so we’ve changed his name and put on a wig”,’ he said, according to The Telegraph.
‘I remember saying to them, this is madness. What we’re doing is madness. These are children. These are three-year-olds.’
Dr Hakeem said there was an overrepresentation of grieving parents who had lost a child, only to become pregnant again.
He compared the behaviour of parents to Munchausen by proxy disease, in which a caregiver makes up symptoms in order to create an illusion that their child is sick, calling it ‘Transhausen by proxy’.
His comments come after it was revealed at least 15 children under the age of four were directed to the controversial clinic in the past two years.
A similar number of five-year-olds were referred between 2021-2022.
The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock clinic is the nation’s only gender identity service for children.
NHS documents state that, in total, over 5,000 children were referred to Tavistock’s service in the past two years, over concerns they were suffering from their gender identity not matching their biological sex.
Only half of referrals were for children aged 15-plus.
The NHS data, unveiled among some new guidelines for how to treat children with gender dysphoria, only concerns referrals to the GIDS at Tavistock.
Not all of the patients would have been taken on for actual treatment, which can include puberty blockers and hormones that help change their bodies to align more with their gender identity.
NHS England is cracking down on how children are referred to gender identity care in the future, in the wake of the Tavistock chaos which saw its GIDS service ruled unsafe following a review.
Other mental health issues were ‘overshadowed’ in favour of gender identity treatment, prompting accusations that staff rushed children onto powerful drugs.
Under current guidelines, health and social service staff, teachers, and charities can refer a child they think is suffering from gender dysphoria to specialist NHS care.
But under draft rules published this week, which could be enforced from the spring, referrals to NHS gender identity care would be restricted to GPs and health service staff.
Stella O’Malley, psychotherapist and director of campaign group Genspect said the fact children under the age of four were being referred for gender identity care, ‘shocking and concerning’.
‘Children up until the age of roughly seven or eight engage in magical thinking, for example they can believe that thinking about something can make it real,’ she said.
‘Very young kids who are gender non conforming should be free to live as they please- nobody should be responding to gender non conformity as a problem to be treated.’
The NHS estimates this change would slash referrals to gender identify care by 5 per cent, or about 250 children based on the latest data.
