So has society’s approach to this group been helping or hurting them?
How much of a political ‘third rail’ is this topic? It’s so charged that a prominent Lesbian Tennis star has been stripped of her ‘Ally’ status as an early champion of LGBT rights for daring to ask hard questions about the consequences of charging ahead with the new normal.
The topic, of course, is transgenderism. But the implications for women’s sports is only ONE of the questions being raised.
Another is the concerns about what some are calling ‘social contagion’ where statistically-improbable concentrations of people from a close-knit social group all announce their new sexuality in a short period of time.
Now there are also some NEW psycho-social questions being raised. Questions about the mental health of those affected. A new study has come out describing the well-being of such students but doesn’t clarify WHY there is an enormous connection between these psychological conditions and gender identity.
Nearly 80 percent of college students who identify as transgender, gender nonconforming, genderqueer and non-binary reported feeling depressed, anxious or having an eating disorder.
More than one-third reported that they had seriously thought about committing suicide in the past year.
The team, led by Boston University, says the findings provide further evidence that these students need gender-affirming services on campus, and they need to be regularly screened for mental health concerns.
Some will argue that social pressures ‘othering’ gender non-conforming students will put psychological strain on the students. That is one possible explanation. In that case, some of our extreme ‘acceptance’ approaches in society are not just well-meaning, but entirely warranted.
Let’s not be so arrogant to assume we have all the answers at this early date. There is still a lot we don’t really know yet.
Let us suppose for a moment any causal relationship between mental illness and sexual identity is actually the other way around — then what?
We have been seeing a rise in gender-nonconforming attitudes in young adults of college age. But we have ALSO seen a sharp rise in mental health issues in that same group.
From a 2018 article in Psychology Today:
The take-home message is this: The college student mental health crisis refers to the massive increase in treatment-seeking in college students. Whereas perhaps 10% were self-identified and seeking treatment in the 1980s, now approximately 33% are. This massive rise is likely a function of both more accepting attitudes about reporting distress and seeking and receiving treatment, and actual increases in stress, anxiety, and depression and other related problems.
Could you imagine a hypothetical future where scientific studies discover that pre-existing problems with social isolation, depression, anxiety, etcetera are not actually the RESULT of gender dysphoria, but are, in fact, one of the preconditions that LEAD to the various conditions of gender dysphoria?
If that came to be accepted scientific consensus, what would those same hypothetical future psychologists say about our current politicized rush to social acceptance?
Without actually knowing the driving factors of this new psychological phenomenon, will the current draconian enforcement of PC social changes forbidding us from asking certain ‘why’ questions actually be HARMING the very group those changes set out to protect?
What if this enforced silence only masks the deeper problems that relatively new phenomena would otherwise indicate?
In that case, wouldn’t a well-meaning approving smile given to this gender non-conformity be every bit as detrimental to their overall health as, say, affirming the body image of an anorexic might be to theirs?
Look at those stats again.
Eighty percent of that one sub-group of students have a concerning mental health issue, and one-third have contemplated suicide.
Those are serious red flags, and one would hope we can all agree that nobody wants to see these young people come to any harm.
But there are two very different remedies to this problem being offered, and the only real way to know for sure which path forward is the poison and which one is the cure is to have as full an understanding of the relationship between mental illness and gender nonconformity as we can possibly gain.
Charging ahead half-cocked could be as dangerous to the people we hope to help as the well-meaning doctors who prescribed bloodletting were to George Washington.
This observer doesn’t claim to have all the answers, can we at least be sure we’ve asked all the right questions?