More Than 1,000 Patients a Year are Referred for Trans “Chest Surgery” on the NHS

Mental health professionals have long recognised that psychological distress is sometimes projected into the body. Conditions like anorexia are understood as a maladaptive coping mechanism, in which patients attempt to manage psychic pain by changing or controlling the physical body.

At no time in history has it been considered appropriate for clinicians to affirm their patients’ maladaptive beliefs by agreeing that their body is wrong and must be changed.

Yet now we learn that the NHS has enabled the maladaptive beliefs of thousands of vulnerable young women, referring them to surgeons to have their healthy breasts amputated on the basis of a meaningless diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’. Were it not for the culture of fear that activists and lobby groups have created around this spurious diagnostic label, we would have no hesitation in calling this out for exactly what it is: a grisly experiment in radical body modification surgery and the medical mutilation of deeply vulnerable young women.

People diagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ are disproportionately likely to be autistic and to suffer from mental health problems like anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychosis and eating disorders. They are more likely than their peers to have experienced trauma, neglect or abuse. Performing experimental cosmetic surgery on these young women is like giving liposuction to an anorexic. It is an elaborate form of medically sanctioned self-harm, in which doctors collude with their patients in the maladaptive belief that psychological pain can be magically ‘cured’ by cosmetically changing the body.

The NHS has deprived these young women of the opportunity to address the root causes of their distress, limiting their ability to engage with profound human experiences, such as breastfeeding and sexual intimacy, that might have lead them to a place of greater psychological health and self-acceptance. Eighty percent of the young women referred for breast amputation were ages 17 to 25, far too young to understand what they were sacrificing.

We must end the normalisation of these invasive, irreversible procedures and the mystical beliefs that underpin them. The NHS is a publicly funded institution. It must stop using tax payer money to perform experimental body modification procedures on the mentally unwell. And it must confront activist clinicians who abuse concepts like ‘bodily autonomy’ and ‘consent’ to justify such experiments.

For further information or to request a comment, please contact:

Genspect UK Director – Carrie Clark

Email: carriec@genspect.org

Phone: 07757414732