Mick Hartley

The original 2011 GIDS study reported "no change" in the mental health of children put on puberty blockers. The data has now been analysed more closely:

The majority of children in a landmark study on puberty blockers experienced positive or negative changes in their mental health, new analysis suggests.

The original study of 44 children, who all took the controversial drugs for a year or more, found no mental health impact – neither benefits nor harm.

But a re-analysis of that data now suggests 34% saw their mental health deteriorate, while 29% improved….

In 2011, a team from the Tavistock's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) – England's only NHS specialist gender clinic for children – and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) embarked on what became known as the early intervention study.

They enrolled 44 children, aged between 12 and 15, over the following three years. The study looked at the impact taking puberty blockers – medicines used to postpone puberty in children – was having. It resulted in the age at which puberty blockers could be offered on the NHS being lowered.

When the landmark study's results were published in 2021, it revealed blockers brought "no changes in psychological function" to those taking them.

But this differed from earlier findings of Dutch researchers, who pioneered this approach to treating gender dysphoria. They reported a positive impact on young people's mental health and wellbeing….

Prof Susan McPherson, from the University of Essex, and David Freedman, a retired social scientist, have since re-analysed the data. They instead looked at the individual trajectories of each of the young people in the early intervention study.

They found, after 12 months of puberty blocker injections – 34% of the children had reliably deteriorated, 29% had reliably improved, and 37% showed no change, according to their self-reported answers.

The more they look, the worse it gets. It's all in stark contrast to the "trans joy" that was originally claimed.

It's interesting, but of course the real scandal is in the physical effect of giving such powerful drugs to confused pre-pubertal kids, denying them a normal puberty and almost certainly committing them to a future of sterility and lifelong medical intervention.