The documented harms of denying trans healthcare
Dr Helen Webberley on Times Radio: puberty blockers, with Andrew Neil, Times Radio
We don't really know what happens to trans young people who can't access care. The risks of withholding treatment are uncertain, contested, or at least not clearly established in the way that the risks of treatment are.
The harms of denying care are not a matter of speculation. Elevated rates of suicide, self-harm, poor mental health, disrupted education, and low life satisfaction in trans young people who cannot access support are among the most consistently documented findings in this field. When people frame this debate as "known risks of treatment versus unknown risks of withholding it", they have the evidence backwards. Both sides of that equation have been studied. The cost of saying no is not neutral, and it has never been.
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