Age limit on transgender treatment could endanger young patients, says lecturer

By JAMES GARDINER

Young people refused hormone treatment on the grounds they are too young could be placed at severe risk of harming themselves or suicide, according to a Massey University health sciences lecturer.

Dr Suzanne Phibbs was commenting on a report this week that a Hutt Valley boy was given hormone treatment for four years from the age of 14 to become a girl and now plans to undergo surgery.

Early identification and treatment of transgender people often meant more successful outcomes, the Massey lecturer said.

Being transgender was about having a social identity that did not match the anatomical body. Such people were often at risk of emotional or physical harm if they were not taken seriously and treated sympathetically.

She said the subject in the Hutt Valley case was "very brave to come forward at that young age".

"These people at that age are incredibly vulnerable to self-harming behaviour.

"A lot go the other way and completely bury it and do things like join the Army or the police and engage in really macho activities to try to suppress and run away from their feelings," she said.

"The mental health aspects of it and the support that those people need would be more important than a total ban on providing access to a means of helping them cope with the way they're feeling or what they're going through."

She said hormone treatment, which could prevent the body masculinising or feminising during puberty, was not available simply on prescription. Psychologists and endocrinologists were consulted and intensive counselling was provided.

"I would suggest it's probably not appropriate for very young people, no, but there are ways of having them in a holding pattern during puberty so that, when they are actually old enough to make up their own mind their body hasn't done that for them."

Once the body started changing "feelings of self-loathing start to kick in".

A lot of people simply continued to take the hormones but did not go through with sex-change surgery.

Changing gender was not the same as changing sexuality. "You can have transgender people, maybe a male to female transgendered person who identifies as a lesbian, for example.

"These people need support, not vilification ...

"A huge factor is the intolerance of people who are in between gender or are not clearly one gender or another.

"Public space is not safe space for people who are like that. That issue has to be addressed in terms of the discrimination that many trans-gender people face."

Dr Phibbs gained her doctorate in the socio-cultural aspects of trans-gender people.