For more than a year now, we’ve been praising the health services in Great Britain over their decision to pull back from “gender transition care” for children, starting with the closing of the Tavistock gender clinic last summer. (And there were many very good reasons to shut that clinic down.) The Brits were following a pattern that’s been showing up in other European nations including Sweden and Denmark where nearly all transgender “care” for children has been put on hold while clinical studies are conducted. That’s why I was rather surprised to see a headline yesterday suggesting that the British National Health Service would be funding “transgender treatments” for children provided they are at least seven years old. But as it turns out, there is a bit more to the story than the headline would suggest and it’s not nearly as bad as it looks at first glance. (Zerohedge, emphasis added)

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) will allow children as young as seven to receive transgender care, according to plans seen by The Telegraph. The plans, which are part of a broader overhaul of the transgender treatment system, have sparked concerns over the potential consequences of early medical intervention on young minds.

Children covered by the services will be offered psychological support and therapy to focus on issues that may have led to feelings concerning their gender, however health experts warn that the new rule could still put children with mental health struggles on a “pathway to medical transition.”

If the first line of approach for children exhibiting mental and emotional difficulties is “psychological support and therapy,” that is still a vast improvement over what we’ve seen elsewhere, including far too many clinics in the United States. That was one of the chief complaints that led to Tavistock being shut down. It was reported that the vast majority of pediatric patients there suffered from other mental disorders that went almost completely ignored while the children were rushed into the transition pipeline. The NHS sounds like they are focusing on therapy and mental and emotional counseling to determine what the root causes may be.

And that, as I said, was the chief problem with Tavistock. There was an old saying common in American movies back in the day, referring to cowboys who would “shoot first and ask questions later.” At Tavistock, the policy was to shoot first (as in a syringe full of hormones) and ask no other questions later. That led to a vast number of lawsuits being brought by the families of children who later detransitioned but realized they were scarred for life, many both psychologically and physically.

With that said, the specialists who are warning that this early treatment that even touches on the trans question could push some children toward “a pathway to medical transition” are raising a valid point. Repeating my usual disclaimer that I am not a doctor, this sounds like a potentially tricky path for these doctors to walk with their young patients. If one of the family’s complaints is that their child is already asking questions about gender identity and talking about transitioning, it seems like the subject can’t be avoided. Hopefully, talk therapy can steer them on the correct path.

The larger concern, at least to me, is that some of these therapists will bring up gender questions out of the blue even if the child has never mentioned it. That might become a self-fulfilling prophecy in some cases. It’s bad enough that many of them have teachers and peers in school singing the praises of gender transition all of the time. We don’t need pediatric psychologists doing it as well.

As the linked article also points out, the NHS will be focusing more attention on the question of puberty blockers, particularly for children as young as seven when too many American clinics start pushing them. Some studies are finally being done, but so little is known about the long-term effects that the NHS should be treating that as a course of last resort. The effects of lengthy treatment with these drugs that have never been approved for use in gender dysphoria patients are irreversible and completely destructive. Hopefully, the NHS will put in the appropriate guardrails. If only the larger medical associations in America could start demonstrating some of this type of sanity.