Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children

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Dr Anna Hutchinson is a clinical psychologist who has specialised in adolescent mental health and embodied distress over many years. You know, the work of my colleague, Deb Cohen and I, we were absolutely 100% supported by the programme, by our editor Esme Wren. So it is always difficult to persuade people to go on the record, especially when there's an emotional attachment to the story as well.

Hannah Barnes: I told the truth about what was going on at Hannah Barnes: I told the truth about what was going on at

And it becomes even harder then to raise concerns because you're somehow letting down the people that you cared about. Clinicians at Gids insisted the effects of these drugs were reversible; that taking them would reduce the distress experienced by gender dysphoric children; and that there was no causality between starting hormone blockers and going on to take cross-sex hormones (the latter are taken by adults who want fully to transition). Then beyond that, it's in that team meeting where you're allowed to speak but nothing seems to then happen. But I think it's hard to deny that when used to treat gender-related distress they do work in a different way, in that most young people tend not to stop the blocker they just progress then on to another treatment.And in this case, you had a certain cohort of people who are really quite desperate to get their story out. This is a medical scandal, the full consequences of which may only be understood in many years’ time. This NHS service was said to be using “poorly evidenced treatments on some of the most vulnerable people in society”.

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The necessity to track outcomes expressed by GIDS founder Domenico Di Ceglie in 2002 has still not been realised. So it was really trying to bring this out of the gender clinics and into wider society because of course, of course, this is an issue for the trans community, but it's also an issue more generally about children and young people. In a bid to obtain some clinical evidence for the medicalisation of children’s gender identities, a study was commissioned by GIDS in 2011 to examine the outcomes of puberty blockers on children. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images A pedestrian crossing with trans flag colours in central London.When one of the leaders of a service that helps children to access powerful, life-changing drugs comments that what they are doing is “mad”, there is clearly a very big problem. In fact if there is one overriding theme of this book it is the shutting down of thought, both in the counselling of children who were denied adequate opportunity to think more deeply about the reasons for their distress, and in the response to clinicians who dared to voice their concerns. Or one wanting to transition both sex and race to “become” Japanese, or survivors of trauma with compelling reasons for wishing to leave their old selves behind, or kids with complex mental health diagnoses? And just as the voices of happy trans people should be heard and are valid, so are those of young people who have been let down and, yes, harmed.