WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released an exhaustive report citing evidence that puberty blockers, hormones, and mutilating gender surgeries are irreversibly harmful, and that counseling is far more effective in treating gender confusion.

The report, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria,” is a comprehensive, 409-page study of the direct evidence and best practices for how the medical community diagnoses and treats children struggling with their gender identity, as well as the outcomes. The HHS notes that the report is intended for “policymakers, clinicians, therapists, medical organizations and, importantly, patients and their families.” 

The study analyzed 17 systematic reviews, known as an “umbrella review,” finding that studies purporting beneficial psychological effects of gender interventions were of “very low” quality.

“This indicates that the beneficial effects reported in the literature are likely to differ substantially from the true effects of the interventions,” the report stated. “All these interventions are associated with significant risks, and most cause irreversible physical or physiological effects.”

Those effects, the report listed, include “infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret.”

The authors of the report, whose names have not yet been released, stated in many instances gender confusion resolves “naturally.” By not letting children take their course through puberty and adolescence, these “irreversible” procedures then lead to “lifelong medical dependency” for something that is treatable by other noninvasive means, such as counseling.

Unlike gender interventions, the authors state the systematic reviews on the effects of counseling, also called psychotherapy, “have found no evidence of adverse effects” for treating children with gender confusion. The authors did note that the evidence base needs more research in this area, which is challenged by the polarizing “mischaracterization” of counseling as “conversion therapy.”

Characterizing a therapeutic approach focused on reducing a minor’s gender distress about their body or social role through counseling as “conversion therapy” is “a problematic and potentially harmful rhetorical device,” wrote the authors.

“The effectiveness of psychotherapy for a wide range of mental health problems, including those that often present with gender dysphoria, suggests it may also be beneficial for gender dysphoria specifically,” the authors continued. 

Ultimately, the report is an indictment on the medical community for the current health care model that mutilates children. As the authors state, medical treatments are usually “first established as safe and effective in adults before being extended to pediatric populations. In this case, however, the opposite occurred: clinician-researchers developed the pediatric medical transition protocol in response to disappointing psychosocial outcomes in adults who underwent medical transition.” Then the protocols were “adopted internationally” before proper research could validate the effects. In addition, the “voices of whistleblowers and detransitioners have been discounted, dismissed, or ignored” by those in the medical community administering gender interventions.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The evidence shows gender confusion is linked to underlying mental health issues, which can be effectively treated through counseling. The insanity of gender ideology and greed in the medical community has children paying the price in the form of irreversible harm and regret. The medical profession needs to return to sound science to treat mental health issues with proven psychiatric therapies to heal rather than harm.”

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