Is Transgenderism a Mental Disease?

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

buffalo:

If a person has unwanted same sex attraction, should they be able to seek change and therapy?

There’s nothing stopping adults from doing so. Most laws that ban “reparative therapy,” apply to children, not adults.

Isn’t it odd, that the status quo approves of young children exploring alternative sexual identities (and this obviously requires the “cooperation” of their parents), yet therapies that propose common sense are taboo.

That strikes me as oddly biased and closed minded.

It’s like a child having a right to believe in a flat earth, and a common sense science teacher being told “hands off”.

I don’t know enough about transgender people and gender dysphoria to have an opinion about what kinds of therapy children who are transgender should receive.

But as a gay man, I do know a lot about reparative therapy and personally know a number of people who have been through such programs. The evidence which has accumulated over a number of decades is that such therapy does more harm than good because in most cases, changing sexual orientation has not been possible and after failing to change despite years of trying, many people have suffered a lot of psychological damage and are worse off after having been through such therapy programs.

After an extensive review of the scientific literature on the topic of reparative therapy, the American Psychological Association concluded in 2009: “The results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex sexual attractions or increase other-sex attractions through SOCE [Sexual Orientation Change Efforts]”. The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated: “Therapy directed at specifically changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation.”

So, it is not “common sense” that children with SSA should be subjected to “reparative therapy” and I think that it is right that such therapy should be banned for children.

 

[goout]

The merits of any particular therapy can be discussed, but back to my original point.

It is odd that an ideology like transgenderism, that is radically against common sense, can be foisted on young people, even by parents (can you say "child abuse?). While therapies that might propose common sense are taboo.

At what point should a science teacher be able to tell a flat-earther child that’s not the way it works?

 

[buffalo]

So, it is not “common sense” that children with SSA should be subjected to “reparative therapy” and I think that it is right that such therapy should be banned for children.

Reparative therapy has worked for many.

 

[Thorolfr]

Reparative therapy has worked for many.

There is no good research to back up this statement and it relies mostly on anecdotal evidence. As the American Psychiatric Association has said in a published statement: “In the last four decades, ‘reparative’ therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.”

Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International which was the largest ex-gay organization in the US, had this to say at their 38th annual meeting in 2013:

I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents.

 

[goout]

buffalo:

Reparative therapy has worked for many.

There is no good research to back up this statement and it relies mostly on anecdotal evidence. As the American Psychiatric Association has said in a published a statement: “In the last four decades, ‘reparative’ therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.”

I think it’s good to note that psychiatry is an exponentially booming business, and at the same time we have ever increasing suicides, depression and anxiety, and drug abuse.

So I take anything the APA endorses with a huge bowl of salt.

The heart of this problem is subjectivism, which subjects reality to feelings and perceptions. And subjectivism results in chaos, tyranny, oppression. It makes human beings less human, despite it’s claim to be “more feeling”.

 

[Thorolfr]

I think it’s good to note that psychiatry is an exponentially booming business, and at the same time we have ever increasing suicides, depression and anxiety, and drug abuse.

So I take anything the APA endorses with a huge bowl of salt.

The heart of this problem is subjectivism, which subjects reality to feelings and perceptions. And subjectivism results in chaos, tyranny, oppression. It makes human beings less human, despite it’s claim to be “more feeling”.

I’ve been to a couple of psychiatrists and have seen therapists to treat Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and of all the medical fields, I’ve found psychiatry to be one of the least scientific. The DSM which is used to make diagnoses is basically a book that describes symptoms of various mental disorders rather than the underlying biological mechanisms behind them. That’s mostly because our understanding of how the brain works is still in it’s infancy. So, even I’m a little skeptical sometimes of what psychiatrists or psychologists have told me.

But it isn’t all that long ago that other kinds of medicine were based on theories about different kinds of humors and medical doctors were using medications that contained arsenic and mercury and one of the most important methods of treatment was bloodletting which was harming patients rather than helping them. And in the mental health field, people were often just locked away in insane asylums and were being treated with lobotomies and other barbaric medical procedures. So, I think that psychiatry will get better as we learn more about how the brain works just as other medical fields improved as we learned more about how other parts of the body work.

In the meantime, I’d be much worse off myself if I wasn’t receiving any treatment for ADHD, as imperfect as it is. And, I have no doubt, that people suffering from depression or anxiety or OCD, etc. would be worse off without psychiatrists and psychologists to treat them and more people would be committing suicide without them.

 

[buffalo]

There is no good research to back up this statement and it relies mostly on anecdotal evidence. As the American Psychiatric Association has said in a published statement: “In the last four decades, ‘reparative’ therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.”

Yes, there have been a number of studies that APA wished to ignore. Why? 7 of 8 of the members on the committee are gay which overrepresents the population.,

Here is a response with all the references.

A Comphrensive Response to Objections of the Treatment of Homosexuality by the American Psychological Association (APA)

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55efa8b5e4b0c21dd4f4d8ee/t/56e0efe1746fb92b0e791b06/1457582055062/NARTH+%231.pdf

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

There is no good research to back up this statement and it relies mostly on anecdotal evidence. As the American Psychiatric Association has said in a published statement: “In the last four decades, ‘reparative’ therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.”

Yes, there have been a number of studies that APA wished to ignore. Why? 7 of 8 of the members on the committee are gay which overrepresents the population.,

Which committee is this and can you tell me who’s on this committee?

 

[buffalo]

Which committee is this and can you tell me who’s on this committee?

It is described in the video I linked that you refuse to watch.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

There is no good research to back up this statement and it relies mostly on anecdotal evidence. As the American Psychiatric Association has said in a published statement: “In the last four decades, ‘reparative’ therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.”

Yes, there have been a number of studies that APA wished to ignore. Why? 7 of 8 of the members on the committee are gay which overrepresents the population.,

Here is a response with all the references.

A Comphrensive Response to Objections of the Treatment of Homosexuality by the American Psychological Association (APA)

https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...e1746fb92b0e791b06/1457582055062/NARTH+#1.pdf

Considering that even Exodus International, which was the largest ex-gay organization, closed its doors a few years ago and admitted that most of its members had been unable to change, what NARTH has to say doesn’t carry much water.

 

[goout]

goout:

I think it’s good to note that psychiatry is an exponentially booming business, and at the same time we have ever increasing suicides, depression and anxiety, and drug abuse.

So I take anything the APA endorses with a huge bowl of salt.

The heart of this problem is subjectivism, which subjects reality to feelings and perceptions. And subjectivism results in chaos, tyranny, oppression. It makes human beings less human, despite it’s claim to be “more feeling”.

I’ve been to a couple of psychiatrists and have seen therapists to treat Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and of all the medical fields, I’ve found psychiatry to be one of the least scientific. The DSM which is used to make diagnoses is basically a book that describes symptoms of various mental disorders rather than the underlying biological mechanisms behind them. That’s mostly because our understanding of how the brain works is still in it’s infancy. So, even I’m a little skeptical sometimes of what psychiatrists or psychologists have told me.

But it isn’t all that long ago that other kinds of medicine were based on theories about different kinds of humors and medical doctors were using medications that contained arsenic and mercury and one of the most important methods of treatment was bloodletting which was harming patients rather than helping them. And in the mental health field, people were often just locked away in insane asylums and were being treated with lobotomies and other barbaric medical procedures. So, I think that psychiatry will get better as we learn more about how the brain works just as other medical fields improved as we learned more about how other parts of the body work.

In the meantime, I’d be much worse off myself if I wasn’t receiving any treatment for ADHD, as imperfect as it is. And, I have no doubt, that people suffering from depression or anxiety or OCD, etc. would be worse off without psychiatrists and psychologists to treat them and more people would be committing suicide without them.

Ok. But that’s not the point really.

 

[buffalo]

Considering that even Exodus International, which was the largest ex-gay organization, closed its doors a few years ago and admitted that most of its members had been unable to change, what NARTH has to say doesn’t carry much water.

There were compounded reasons for Exodus closing.

I direct you to this Cathoiic site:

https://couragerc.org/medical/

 

[buffalo]

Overall, we agree with Shidlo and Schroeder (2002) that more “complementary research (is) needed.” Such research ideally “would include interviews with sexual orientation conversion therapists and analysis of psychotherapy sessions by independent third-party observers.” In the absence of clear, reliable, and valid scientific evidence, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that professional organizations like the American Psychological Association, the UK Association of Christian Counselors, various state and national government legislatures, and even media such as The Guardian , are working to prevent mental-health professionals from offering educational guidance, counseling, and therapeutic care for persons with unwanted SSA and behavior based on ideological, and not scientific or professional, grounds. Persons who experience unwanted SSAs and behaviors have the right to receive professional care to try to change (i.e., manage, diminish, or resolve) these feelings and behaviors if they choose to do so.

 

[goout]

Folks, it is not helpful here that we are conflating homosexuality with transgenderism. It only confuses people. They are two different issues related tangentially.

 

[buffalo]

This is a summary of more than 20 years of research into homosexuality. It draws on more than 10,000 scientific papers and publications from all sides of the debate.

The research is orthodox, and objective, undertaken by a New Zealand scientist (PhD - Biochemistry) whose international career has spanned more than 40 years.

Change

The huge amount of change in sexual orientation is one of the clearest evidences that homosexuality is not hard-wired by genes or anything in the biological environment.

Large studies now show that:

For adults:

About half of those with exclusive SSA move towards heterosexuality over a lifetime. Put another way, 3% of the practising heterosexual population (both men and women) claim to have once been either bisexual or homosexual.
These changes are not therapeutically induced, but happen “naturally” in life, some very quickly.
Most changes in sexual orientation are towards exclusive heterosexuality.
Numbers of people who have changed towards exclusive OSA are greater than current numbers of bisexuals and exclusive SSA people combined. In other words, “Ex-gays outnumber actual gays.”
Exclusive OSA is 17 times as stable as exclusive SSA for men, and 30 times as stable as exclusive SSA for women. (Women move about more in their sexual orientation than men.)

For adolescents:

Most teenagers will change from SSA. In fact, in the 16 to 17 year age group, 98% will move from homosexuality and bisexuality towards heterosexuality.
16 year olds saying they are SSA or Bi-attracted are 25 times more likely to say they are opposite sex attracted at the age of 17 than those with a heterosexual orientation are likely to identify themselves as bi-sexual or homosexual.
16-year olds who claim they are opposite sex attracted will overwhelmingly remain that way.

 

[buffalo]

Other

Divorce doubles the risk of later homosexuality in children
The stages of psycho-social development toward adult heterosexuality are well defined and accepted by developmental psychologists, and are so obviously learned that heterosexuality is clearly not genetically mandated. In surveys of adult homosexuals many show deficits in several of these developmental stages—suggesting that homosexuality is cultural and environmental rather than genetic.
There is a much higher occurrence of homosexuality among those who have been raised in large cities, rather than in rural areas, arguing that the environment is much more powerful than genes in the development of homosexuality.
A scientific/sociological tool, Path Analysis, has been argued to show that there is no social or familial basis to homosexuality, but rather a biological one. However, social and family paths leading to homosexuality were collectively significant, though individual paths were not. In contrast genetic paths were collectively insignificant.

 

[buffalo]

Conclusions​

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden | PLOS ONE

 

[Thorolfr]

So what is the point? You complain about psychiatry and psychology being based on feelings and perceptions, but really all we have to go on is patients’ feelings and perceptions, i.e. are they feeling better or feeling worse, are they functioning better or are they functioning worse.

When I see my doctor, all he can go on is my reported perceptions, possibly backed up by third party observations, about whether I’m less distracted and am more focused than what I was before the dosage of myedication was raised or since I completed some kind of therapy.

The same goes for something like depression. Does the patient feel more depressed or less depressed after some kind of therapy or medication? What more objective measure of mental health would you suggest that could actually be measured?

 

[Thorolfr]

Comparing the suicide risk of transgender people after transitioning to the general population isn’t all that useful. It would be more important to compare the suicide risk of transgender people who transitioned to those who didn’t. I doubt that there is enough data yet to make a good analysis.

 

[Thorolfr]

So, why would a PhD in biochemistry be especially qualified to make this kind of analysis of the literature on homosexuality?