UPDATE 2
25 March 2024
Dear Supporter,
Welcome to our latest newsletter! If you joined us recently, thank you for signing up. We are very grateful to you all for your support.
Here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks, recommendations for useful organisations, interesting reading, and two excellent new books.
NEWS
Save Mental Health receives an exciting invitation!
Soon after the launch of our campaign, we were contacted by the organisers of the European Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies. The EABCT is a prestigious organisation encompassing 54 individual associations from 40 different countries. They are holding their annual congress in Belgrade in September 2024 and we have been invited to speak about the politicisation of therapy. This is an exciting opportunity to question what is happening to the therapeutic professions and to provide an alternative viewpoint. Many thanks to the EABCT for this invitation. Watch this space!
Lunatics Running the Asylum: Going Undercover at the British Psychological Society
James Esses went undercover at a BPS webinar recently. The webinar was designed ‘to shine a light on the history of the LGBT+ community and experience of receiving healthcare’. One of the speakers was Dr Rob Agnew, Chair of the BPS Section of Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity. During the webinar, Dr Agnew compared clinicians who believe in biological reality to ‘incels’ and ‘mysogynists’. This is the same Dr Agnew who recently referred to the NHS’s decision to stop giving children puberty blockers as ‘bigotry-led policy making’.
The BPS is a professional organisation with 65,000 members. It describes its work as helping’ to influence and develop a psychological approach to policy-making that puts people first.’ Presumably this does not apply to those people it views as bigots. It is well worth subscribing to James Esses’ Substack to read the piece in full. From his exposures of the Financial Times and John Lewis to Pets at Home, there is a wealth of material to explore. Access to the Substack is currently free, although contributions to James’s valuable work would be welcome.
NHS bans puberty blockers (but there’s a twist)
The NHS recently announced a ban on puberty blockers for young people. This was greeted with relief by those of us who are concerned about young people with gender dysphoria being put on a pathway towards medicalisation. It was not long, though, before the NHS muddied the waters by making a further announcement that their new youth gender services will provide masculinising and feminising hormones to children from around their 16th birthday. Hannah Barnes points out that even at the Tavistock GIDS clinic, young people could only access such hormones if they had been on puberty blockers for one year.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, at NHS clinics such as the Sandyford, business continues as usual. There is also the question of what to do about private clinics that continue to provide puberty blockers. Helen Joyce of Sex Matters said: “The NHS must urgently rethink before any more children are harmed by medical practices that are driven by ideology rather than evidence of clinical benefit.”
Ferret filibustering
Andrew Doyle had something to say about MPs in the House of Commons who filibustered by talking about ferrets for some considerable time so that Liz Truss was prevented from presenting her private member’s bill designed to introduce legislation safeguarding single-sex spaces and preventing children from making irreversible decisions about their bodies.
Watch the video here.
‘Mental Health Culture has gone too far’
This week Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride expressed concerns that ‘mental health culture’ was leading to a ‘ballooning welfare bill’. He made the point that there had been ‘a sharp rise in the number of people, especially the young, on long-term sickness payments for mental health conditions’. This is a sensitive and complex area for discussion that does not lend itself to easy explanations or solutions.
Here at Save Mental Health we too are concerned about the number of young people experiencing a range of mental health conditions. Two authors have recently put forward possible explanations for why this is happening. In her book Bad Therapy, Abigail Shrier talks of the detrimental effects on young people and their parents of the spread of ‘therapeutic culture’, pointing out that ‘Wanting to help is not the same as helping’. Jonathan Haidt’s new book Anxious Generation (see below for details) raises concerns about ‘phone-based’ rather than ‘play-based’ childhoods. Both authors put forward differing but complementary explanations for the growth in mental health problems in the young. What are your views on this? Please contact us with your thoughts.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Genspect
The organisation Genspect advocates for a non-medicalized approach to gender dysphoria, underpinned by a quality evidence-base. Genspect’s Executive Director Stella O’Malley and Genspect Advisor Sasha Ayad, have a podcast called Gender: a Wider Lens and a very helpful book titled When Kids Say They’re Trans. There are many useful resources and publications available on their website and you can contact them if you need support.
Time to Think
Hannah Barnes’ book about the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service Time to Think, has been updated and will be released in paperback on 28 March. Essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the medicalisation of children and wonders how ideology and activism played a part in the demise and closure of an NHS service. Here is an interesting interview with Hannah Barnes in The Times where she talks about the ‘full extent of the chaos’ since the Tavistock GIDS clinic was declared ‘unsafe’ by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass.
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and co-author, with Greg Lukianoff, of The Coddling of the American Mind, has a new book out on 26 March called The Anxious Generation. This will be of interest to parents, teachers, and indeed anyone who is concerned about the rise of anxiety in young people. Here is an excellent review of the book by Professor Nick Haslam of the University of Melbourne.