No Increase in Suicides among Gender-Confused Youth since Puberty Blockers Blocked in U.K.

The ideologues never quit. After the U.K. closed its major gender-transitioning clinic for youth as “not safe for children” — and later blocked the prescribing of puberty blockers — ideologues spread the rumor on social media that suicides among gender-confused youth had increased dramatically.

Wrong. A new independent review — based on vital statistical data — has found that there has been no measured increase in such youth suicides. From the study:

Conclusions

1. The data do not support the claim that there has been a large rise in suicide by young patients attending the gender services at the Tavistock since the High Court ruling in 2020 or after any other recent date. The figures for the 6 years covered in this review are 12 suicides in total, 2 per year on average, of whom half were under 18. With small numbers, single-figure differences can be expected and causal explanations are unreliable.

This rumormongering can be dangerous to such youth:

2. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide. One risk is that young people and their families will be terrified by predictions of suicide as inevitable without puberty blockers — some of the responses on social media show this.

Another is identification, already-distressed adolescents hearing the message that “people like you, facing similar problems, are killing themselves”, leading to imitative suicide or self-harm, to which young people are particularly susceptible.

The claims are a matter of garbage in, garbage out:

3. The claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence. To be reliable, evidence should be objective, unbiased and open to independent scrutiny. It should admit uncertainty.

Campaign groups are often selective about evidence — there is nothing wrong with this until it becomes misleading and potentially harmful. The evidence put into the public domain for an “explosion” of suicides is not unbiased nor has it been independently verified. There seems to be no suicide expertise behind the claims.

Once again, we are finding that the actual data do not support most of the claims made by gender ideologues. This includes those of the Biden/Harris administration — with its once unequivocal push for “gender-affirming care,” including puberty blocking — as supposedly “medically necessary” and lifesaving medical treatment. (The administration quietly shifted its unequivocal policy recently, stating that it now opposes transition surgeries for minors.)

Harris should have to answer for her administration’s wrong, strident, and child-harming policies toward gender-confused youth in the upcoming campaign.