As of one month ago, a vulnerable and sizable group of Utah’s teens have been denied essential medical care by Utah’s Legislature. As a marriage and family therapist, with a Ph.D. degree from Brigham Young University, I join with my colleagues who work with trans and nonbinary teen clients to express our horror at this misguided and harmful legislation., passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov.
The respected journal Pediatrics reports that hormone therapy for teens resulted in 73% lower odds of suicidality and 60% lower odds of depression compared to those who did not take puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones.
Lowering depression by 60% and suicidality by 73% is far superior to any other program or treatment for teens who qualify for and seek treatment for gender dysphoria. Schools and legislators are willing to spend thousands of dollars on treatments that reduce suicidal ideation by 3% to 5%. Yet Utah’s government has now ignorantly thrown away a critical medical intervention that is currently and spectacularly benefitting the mental health of hundreds of LGBTQ teens in Utah.
Halting this care demonstrates a callous recklessness with Utah citizens who already have lots of reasons to wonder if Utah wants them to thrive. We are certain if the legislators and governor were in our shoes and saw what we see every day in working with these adolescent clients, they would not have passed this law. Certainly they know that LGBTQ+ teens are already at high risk for depression and suicidality.
Interesting how many of the northern European nations disagree with you.
The groomer take
Don’t destroy kids’ bodies for life when they are still kids.
Well what kind of talk therapy is going on? Are you just confirming their delusion that they are in the wrong body? or are you trying to help them understand that boys are boys and girls are girls.
Tribune Pedo much?
BYU has stunned me twice in less than 24 hrs. First, it was finding out they offered transgender voice therapy, which was discontinued. Then, this child abuser, Lisa Hansen, is a BYU grad. What the hell has happened to that school?
Ya know, it's too bad child abuse isn't criminally prosecuted in all it's various forms; including passive, subtle abuse. If it was, it would be a pleasure to watch the pervs and child abusers at The Salt Lake Tribune suffer the consequences.
Transgenderism is a cancer. It must be categorically rejected and rooted out until it is fully extinguished from public consciousness.
Such hateful comments. Have Utahns lost the ability to have collegial discussions about complex topics?
Kidw under 18 are.not capable of making life altering decisions like this, hell, most adults aren't either.
As per usual, is getting ratio’ed hard.
Lol. Mutilate the kids is definitely the answer
This is a crime! The salt lake tribune is promoting child abuse. Anyone associated with this article should be put on jail.
Groomers
These mental health “experts” had it easy. Just put the kids on the affirmation conveyor belt into the trans factory. Now they are sad they actually have to help the kids. Definitely harder and more work.
This GARBAGE is ruining our country and making us weak. Keep children out of your sexual perversions. Why is it so difficult? Leave the kids alone.
Marxist media: More trans news!
So prescribe the appropriate medications to help with their mental health.
The groomers and child mutilators are big mad!
Fake Dr’s pretending that cutting off body parts and giving sterilization drugs to children is medical “care”.
Children can not consent to the lifelong consequences. The UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway and several other countries have changed focus away from blockers and social transitioning Several studies are sourced here:
Great letter, Dr. Hansen. The UT Leg. has clearly shown it lies when it says it cares for all UT youth. GovCox wants to have it both ways. He plays the compassionate conservative card & then routinely does a right face & appeases his RW base. I'm so sick of his duplicitousness.
Translation. Maybe if we chemically castrate them they’ll feel better and I’ll get rich offering pseudoscientific therapies that irreversibly damage them.
This paragraph make no sense, I guess I’m not surprised when it’s written by a shitty wanna be news paper.
Once again, the trib is for cutting up kids and promoting long term harm. Shameful to allow one sided, biased and bald faced lies to be published.
STOP. SEXUALLY. MUTILATING. CHILDREN. What is so difficult for Liberals to understand about this? If you want to surgically mutilate a child for the sake of trendy Liberal politics, you're evil. End of story.