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Psychiatrist in chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital is pouring rain on the Bruce Jenner “Call Me Caitlyn” parade that’s sure to have the former Olympic athlete’s cheerleaders steaming.
Not only does Dr. Paul R. McHugh consider changing sexes “biologically impossible,” he thinks being what is popularly called “transgender” these days is actually a “mental disorder.”
McHugh, who has authored six books and at least 125 peer-reviewed medical journal articles, made the statements in a piece he penned for the Wall Street Journal that argued surgery is not the solution for patients who want to live life as the opposite sex.
Such people, he wrote, suffer from a “disorder of assumption” in believing they can choose their sex.
He also cited a study that said transgendered people who have reassignment surgery are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than non-transgendered people,
While the Obama administration, Hollywood and major media such as Time magazine promote transgenderism as “normal,” McHugh wrote, said Dr. McHugh, these “policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.”
“This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken – it does not correspond with physical reality,” McHugh wrote. “The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”
The transgendered person’s disorder, said Dr. McHugh, is in the person’s “assumption” that they are different than the physical reality of their body, their maleness or femaleness, as assigned by nature. It is a disorder similar to a “dangerously thin” person suffering anorexia who looks in the mirror and thinks they are “overweight,” said McHugh.
This assumption, that one’s gender is only in the mind regardless of anatomical reality, has led some transgendered people to push for social acceptance and affirmation of their own subjective “personal truth,” said Dr. McHugh. As a result, some states – California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts – have passed laws barring psychiatrists, “even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor,” he said.
The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery.”
“And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs,” said Dr. McHugh.
The former Johns Hopkins chief of psychiatry also warned against enabling or encouraging certain subgroups of the transgendered, such as young people “susceptible to suggestion from ‘everything is normal’ sex education,” and the schools’ “diversity counselors” who, like “cult leaders,” may “encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery.”
Dr. McHugh also reported that there are “misguided doctors” who, working with very young children who seem to imitate the opposite sex, will administer “puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous – even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.”
Such action is "child abuse,” said Dr. McHugh, given that close to 80% of those kids will “abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated ….”
What a shame for you that they get much better after surgery to remove said part...Gender identity disorder is the same kind of mental illness as body integrity disorder where people want limbs amputated.
You might have a point but Bruce wasn't one of those. Paint can is typical,one day its all about the science,listen to the experts,yet when an expert ,using his years of training experience,having risen to the top of his trade,doesn't agree with a internet board pats i,he is just an old white man that wrong.Just because you're smart and accomplished doesn't mean you aren't wrong, and he is.
I wonder what sex he thinks XY women and XX men are? Is an X0 woman only half a woman? How about XXXY? Nature, unlike this probably very nice old man, does not suffer from black and white thinking.
You are a coward who runs from imaginary enemies. Your opinion is worth no more than any other yellow bellied, lily livered excuse for a sack of skin. Run, run away.What a shame for you that they get much better after surgery to remove said part...Gender identity disorder is the same kind of mental illness as body integrity disorder where people want limbs amputated.
Kathleen Taylor, Neuroscientist, Says Religious Fundamentalism Could Be Treated As A Mental Illness
Just because you're smart and accomplished doesn't mean you aren't wrong, and he is.
I wonder what sex he thinks XY women and XX men are? Is an X0 woman only half a woman? How about XXXY? Nature, unlike this probably very nice old man, does not suffer from black and white thinking.
Silly Leftist!Just because you're smart and accomplished doesn't mean you aren't wrong, and he is.
I wonder what sex he thinks XY women and XX men are? Is an X0 woman only half a woman? How about XXXY? Nature, unlike this probably very nice old man, does not suffer from black and white thinking.
I don't know about any of this. Perhaps the psychiatrist is correct and this is a very mean mental disorder. But we know Jenner was very unhappy for years being a man. He just may find that his new persona doesn't ease the troubled mind he's had for years. He just may develop more troubling psychiatric conditions when his expected life does not turn out to be what he had hoped. I wish him and all others going through the same tribulation the best of luck.
I don't know about any of this. Perhaps the psychiatrist is correct and this is a very mean mental disorder. But we know Jenner was very unhappy for years being a man. He just may find that his new persona doesn't ease the troubled mind he's had for years. He just may develop more troubling psychiatric conditions when his expected life does not turn out to be what he had hoped. I wish him and all others going through the same tribulation the best of luck.
Not to be argumentative, but what actual proof do you have that it was being a man that made him unhappy? He actually functioned quite well as one.
He fathered children as a male and says he continues to be attracted to women. Prototypical happy male behavior.
If the numbers are correct, and 20% of surgically altered commit suicide, it would look that their unhappiness is not with gender.
In other breaking news water is wet and the sun is hot.
I don't know about any of this. Perhaps the psychiatrist is correct and this is a very mean mental disorder. But we know Jenner was very unhappy for years being a man. He just may find that his new persona doesn't ease the troubled mind he's had for years. He just may develop more troubling psychiatric conditions when his expected life does not turn out to be what he had hoped. I wish him and all others going through the same tribulation the best of luck.
Not to be argumentative, but what actual proof do you have that it was being a man that made him unhappy? He actually functioned quite well as one.
He fathered children as a male and says he continues to be attracted to women. Prototypical happy male behavior.
If the numbers are correct, and 20% of surgically altered commit suicide, it would look that their unhappiness is not with gender.
In the interviews with DS, he claimed that he was living a lie and couldn't do it any longer. I interpreted that to mean he was very unhappy with his situation.
And, assuming that 20% of transgendered individuals commit suicide is higher than the general population, the change did not alter their confusion and general unhappiness. That change did not help ease the psyche of those who had reassignment surgery. Perhaps those who are troubled with their natural sex assignment Should just have more psychiatric care to discover the real reason they are unhappy with their gender.
I don't pretend to be an expert, just acknowledging that, generally, the reassignments don't seem to make these people any happier.
I don't know about any of this. Perhaps the psychiatrist is correct and this is a very mean mental disorder. But we know Jenner was very unhappy for years being a man. He just may find that his new persona doesn't ease the troubled mind he's had for years. He just may develop more troubling psychiatric conditions when his expected life does not turn out to be what he had hoped. I wish him and all others going through the same tribulation the best of luck.
Not to be argumentative, but what actual proof do you have that it was being a man that made him unhappy? He actually functioned quite well as one.
He fathered children as a male and says he continues to be attracted to women. Prototypical happy male behavior.
If the numbers are correct, and 20% of surgically altered commit suicide, it would look that their unhappiness is not with gender.
In the interviews with DS, he claimed that he was living a lie and couldn't do it any longer. I interpreted that to mean he was very unhappy with his situation.
And, assuming that 20% of transgendered individuals commit suicide is higher than the general population, the change did not alter their confusion and general unhappiness. That change did not help ease the psyche of those who had reassignment surgery. Perhaps those who are troubled with their natural sex assignment Should just have more psychiatric care to discover the real reason they are unhappy with their gender.
I don't pretend to be an expert, just acknowledging that, generally, the reassignments don't seem to make these people any happier.
I get that. And if HE thinks that I honestly can't read his mind, but it could be simply an obsession that took over that he can't control and needs help getting back.
Watch a few episodes of Hoarders. They all think that getting more and more stuff will make them happy and can't understand why it's never enough.
That's why I asked about the 20%. It sounds like "the cure" is life threatening.
