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[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

On the subject of ASD (I have ASD) the Royal Melbourne Children's hospital did a screening test on the kids coming through their gender clinic and found that something like 40%-50% of them screened for autism which is insane. Like both of those populations are statistically quite small, so the chances of them co-occurring together should be very rare. Knowing that ASD is a communicative and social disability those statistics really worry me because it seems to indicate these kids are going through something entirely different and likely have a poor understanding of the social nature of gender (which is crucial to understand if transitioning).

[–]reluctant_commenter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

like 40%-50% of them screened for autism which is insane. Like both of those populations are statistically quite small, so the chances of them co-occurring together should be very rare

Exactly!! And that is not the only disorder found in startlingly high numbers among this population, either.

These disorders require time, energy and care to properly diagnose and treat. I suspect some degree of this phenomenon we're seeing, is that people (parents, especially, is my guess) don't want to be in it for the "long haul" and commit to a potentially years-long process of helping their disordered child adapt to the world. It's way easier to take a quick fix, which is what the transgender medicalization route offers. "Oh, you're child's depressed but they say they're trans? Turns out we can fix that if we just give them these meds and do a surgery, then they're all done!"

The fact that many gender clinics are actively refusing to screen for ASD, OCD, eating disorders and pretty much any other form of psychopathology, is appalling. It's malpractice. (And some of these doctors are literally being paid extra to push hormone blockers on their patients-- like the Lupron medication.)

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, it's like all the parents who'd rather their kid have adhd that asd because you can just give them a pill for that.

But, nonetheless shouldn't a good medical doctor take steps as you said to determine what that the patient is trans vs something else? Even if i\they are still trans, wouldn't the next step be to give them tailored treatment that has an awareness of the other thing that's going on? They would need vastly different resources than someone who is neurotypical.

And I agree, they should have the crap sued out of them because affirmative therapy is basically malpractice and lazy medicine.