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What I found is that "sex change regret" is far more common than I
thought, and mine was not an isolated case. I also found that
medical research concerning the outcomes is sparse, very sparse
considering how life-changing the surgery is, and how very permanent
the results are.
The article Sex changes are not effective, say researchers by David
Batty, July 30, 2004, in the Society Guardian, resonates with me.
Here is the beginning of the article, along with a link to the
entire article. I’ve highlighted some sections that resonate with
me, but read the whole thing – it’s worth reading.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/jul/30/health.mentalhealth
There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve
the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely
distressed and even suicidal after the operation, according to a
medical review conducted exclusively for Guardian Weekend tomorrow.
The review of more than 100 international medical studies of
post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham 's
aggressive research intelligence facility (Arif) found no robust
scientific evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically
effective.
The Guardian asked Arif to conduct the review after speaking to
several people who regret changing gender or believe that the
medical care they received failed to prepare them for their new
lives. They explain why they are unhappy with their sex change and
how they cope with the consequences in the Weekend magazine tomorrow
(July 31).
Chris Hyde, the director of Arif, said: "There is a huge uncertainty
over whether changing someone's sex is a good or a bad thing. While
no doubt great care is taken to ensure that appropriate patients
undergo gender reassignment, there's still a large number of people
who have the surgery but remain traumatized - often to the point of
committing suicide."
Arif, which advises the NHS in the West Midlands about the evidence
base of healthcare treatments, found that most of the medical
research on gender reassignment was poorly designed, which skewed
the results to suggest that sex change operations are beneficial.
International research suggests that 3-18% of them (transsexuals)
come to regret switching gender.
Research from the US and Holland suggests that up to a fifth of
patients regret changing sex.
In the Transgender Zone
http://www.transgenderzone.com/library/st/fulltext/62.htm author
David Batty talks about writing his article:
The main article in Guardian Weekend was the result of 14 months of
investigation, including more than 100 interviews with TS/TG men and
women, activists, medics and other experts, as well as ploughing
through dozens of research papers going back well over 50 years. I
spent 2-8 hrs interviewing the main case studies - worryingly,
several people told me I had asked them more about their lives than
the psychiatrists who had assessed them.
Then he addressed my situation and the negative reactions I get by
sharing my story:
Some in the transsexual community has done their best to discredit
those who complain they have been misdiagnosed or improperly
treated. The vast majority of those I spoke to who regretted surgery
were not liars or chasing compensation. Many had suffered
considerable trauma and confusion, some had been sexually abused in
childhood, others suffered from severe mental illnesses. The degree
to which most could have been held accountable for their poor
medical care was slight IMO.
Batty reports he discovered in his interviews that
As several psychiatrists and transpeople said to me patients who are
isolated, dysfunctional, in bad relationships, etc will probably
remain so after surgery without proper preparation, care and
support.
I think nothing has changed over the last 30 years—Meyers/McHugh
concluded the very same thing back then. In Surgical Sex (Copyright
© 1991- 2004 First Things), Paul McHugh says:
The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jon Meyer was already developing
a means of following up with adults who received sex-change
operations at Hopkins in order to see how much the surgery had
helped them. He found that most of the patients he tracked down some
years after their surgery were contented with what they had done and
that only a few regretted it. But in every other respect, they were
little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the
same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The
hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to
flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled.
We saw the results as demonstrating that just as these men enjoyed
cross-dressing as women before the operation so they enjoyed
cross-living after it. But they were no better in their
psychological integration or any easier to live with.
I come away with the realization that good research and studies need
to be done on the effectiveness of sex change surgery.
When I read that a respected medical institution in the UK evaluated
more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative
transsexuals and found no robust scientific evidence that gender
reassignment surgery is clinically effective, I conclude that
objective, scientific evidence is sorely lacking. Nothing about the
procedure is proven or determined conclusively yet – not the
diagnosis criteria itself, not the criteria for determining
“successful” outcomes, nor the amount or strength of regret or
happiness with the passage of time.
I fully understand others may come away with completely different
conclusions--that is, perhaps, a good thing, because it proves my
point, that is, the lack of objective pre-surgery "objective
testing."
The diagnosis process becomes nothing more than the equivalent of
psychological diagnosis by Russian roulette.
Feel free to respond, with respect please.
Walt
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