Outlawing Psychotherapy For Trans-Kids Will Not Prevent Suicides

The Federalist 16 April 2015
Psychologically healthy people do not commit suicide. Changing genders is an outward expression of some form of depression that started long before the suicide.

Studies have shown conclusively that suicide is the result of mental illness and untreated depression, but the elite who push for gender change ignore the evidence. Gender-change advocates blame lack of support from parents and society for the suicides of transgender people. Advocates blame bullying, discrimination, and inequality in society—anything but mental illness or depression.

In the 1970s, Dr. Charles Ihlenfeld administered hormone therapy to hundreds of transgenders over six years in his practice as an internist and colleague of Dr. Harry Benjamin. His conclusion? He saw too much unhappiness and too many suicides. Not much has changed since the 1970s. Hormone therapy is still administered to transgenders. Suicide still occurs with far too much frequency, and 41 percent of transgenders attempt suicide. Affirming the false belief that changing genders is a cure for depression has not changed the outcome.

According to those who study suicide, “Over 90 percent of people who die by suicide have a mental illness at the time of their death. Untreated depression is the number one cause for suicide.”

When transgenders realize sometime later—after a few months, a few years or, in some cases, a few decades—that gender change didn’t resolve their unhappiness, discouragement and depression follow. They experience first-hand that no amount of surgical manipulation of body parts, cross-gender behaviors, or cosmetic changes to appearance will ever medically change a person from one gender to the other.

It’s Time to Focus on Preventing Suicide
Kyle Scanlon, a female-to-male transgender, lived the life that activists claim will prevent suicide. Fully integrated, supported, and loved, Scanlon was the executive director of the Lesbian Gay Bi Youth Line, and a well-known and well-respected valued leader and mentor in the trans community in Toronto, Canada. He was committed to improving the quality of life for others. Yet, he turned to suicide on July 3, 2012. His friends said he suffered from depression before and after his transition. Not a smidgeon of discrimination or inequality existed in this transgender’s life; no society to blame. He chose to die, even after changing genders.

Scanlon, with every possible support for being transgender, still took his life. That should be a lesson for us. You can blame society, but it’s the unresolved mental disorders causing suicide.

The time has come to focus first on preventing suicide, not changing genders. We know untreated depression is the leading cause of suicide, but when people tell their doctors they dislike their birth gender and hate their bodies, that fact seems to go out the window. Doctors treat the gender-confused by assisting them toward changing their genders. Perhaps the recklessness of doctors in not identifying mental disorders is causing suicides. For kids, perhaps add in parents and school boards who encourage living the trans life, which places undue psychological pressure on kids who can’t deal with it.

Adult and kid suicides will continue as long as doctors fail to effectively diagnose and treat their mental disorders. Kyle’s suicide is the factual evidence, an unfortunate consequence of focusing on the outward appearance when psychological issues run deep inside. Some day we will learn that no amount of change—including all the surgeries to “look good”—will ever be enough to heal the ache inside.
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