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

05.05.2004

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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