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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
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