Monash Health Gender Clinic treats Victoria’s trans, gender diverse and non-binary people.
The adult service started in 1976 with 47 referrals and has expanded to 250 each year.
Jill Starks from SMH revealed that: “Three former patients of Australia’s controversial sex-change clinic say misdiagnosis and wrongful surgery destroyed their lives.”
One misdiagnosed patient tried to halt the surgery saying: “I think I’m doing the wrong thing, it’s not right, I think we’ve got to stop it.” Reports Jill Starks. But the surgeon went ahead with the surgery regardless.
“It’s true that Andrew thought he was a transsexual. However, the broken childhood that preceded his referral to the clinic is a recurring theme among those who feel they were misdiagnosed. Born to teenage parents, his earliest memories are of being hit and spat on by his father.”
“Andrew describes his experience as like “being on a conveyor belt” — prescribed hormones on the first visit and getting breast implants and a nose job within months. He says he consented to the procedures, and the sex-change surgery, because he believed it was his only option.”
According to The Age, the clinic was temporarily closed in 2009 amongst claims that patients with psychiatric problems had been wrongly diagnosed as transsexuals.
“The 2004 review, led by Victoria’s chief psychiatrist, was never made public, but a copy obtained by The Sunday Age shows the review found that countless patients were given sex changes without proper mental health checks before or after surgery.”
But, as if Transgender Specialists had learnt nothing, in 2016 there were calls to fast-track access to hormones by giving GPs authority to carry out their own psychological assessments.
The ABC reported: “Transgender specialist Dr Pauline Cundill said… “The last few years in particular, we’ve seen exponential increases in the number of trans and gender-diverse clients accessing medical care, and as a result the public clinics have become overwhelmed.”
She said part of the reason for the long delays was a requirement for general practitioners to seek psychological approval before prescribing sex-change hormones.”
“Where we ask ourselves, do all clients require a mental health review prior to initiating hormone therapy? The answer is no, not all clients do,” she said.”
The Herald Sun reports that The Victorian Government gave the clinic $6.4million in 2016.
Trans health service model workshop 2016 reported a dramatic increase from 1 new patient undergoing multidisciplinary assessment each week to 5 new patients weekly.
In the report Jaco Erasmus – Psychiatrist and head of the Gender Dysphoria Clinic at Monash Health (‘Monash Clinic’) claims: “persistent gender dysphoria as a phenomenon is sufficient for people to access medical care in the Monash Clinic, and a psychiatric diagnosis is not required.” (page 7)
Patients like Andrew would strongly disagree.
The same issues are facing the beleaguered Tavistock Clinic in the UK. In just five years, the number of children referred to The Tavistock Centre has risen from 468 to 2,519 a year, That’s over 400%
Marcus Evans, former governor of The Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust told the Daily Mail: “There is pressure from the child who is in a distressed state, there is pressure from the family and the peer group and from the pro-trans lobbies — and all of this puts pressure on the clinician, who may want to help the individual to resolve their distressed state by going along with a quick solution.
“There is a great deal at stake here, as these decisions have long-term consequences.
“I first witnessed some of these consequences 30 years ago, when running a parasuicide clinic in London. This was for adults who had attempted suicide without the intention of actually killing themselves: it was sometimes a cry for help.
“People ended up there for a variety of reasons, but a number of patients had taken an overdose because they had undergone gender reassignment surgery and regretted it.
“This is ultimately the issue being raised with The Tavistock: the concern being that children in its care aren’t been given enough time with clinical professionals to explore their difficulties and reasons for what’s driving them to believe they inhabit the wrong body. And the fear is they might end up like the patients I saw all those years ago.”
Tavistock hired lawyers in an attempt to stop the release of a book detailing the clinic’s treatment of gender dysphoric children.
“The Mail on Sunday exclusively previewed the book in July, highlighting how it challenges what it claims are transgender ‘myths’ told to children.
“The book includes interviews with whistleblowers from GIDS, the only NHS gender clinic for under-18s, warning that doctors are failing to tell young people they are ‘sacrificing’ their chance to have children by taking powerful sex-change drugs.
“It also warns that psychologists will not question if a child is transgender or not for fear of accusations of transphobia, and claims clinicians are failing to acknowledge other reasons for youngsters wanting to change sex, such as autism.”
One mother is taking Tavistock to court for over diagnosing her autistic daughter and giving her experimental hormones without informed consent.
Sue Evans left Tavistock amidst her own concerns. Watch an interview with Sue here:
And you can watch an interview with Charlie Evans who has joined the growing number of young people who have de-transitioned here: