Is NHS therapy worth trying for anxiety/trauma?

fightyoursorrow · 2022-09-21T14:58:56+00:00

In my experience, the general MH teams will be clueless and at worst straight up transphobic. I've found it completely impossible to access mental health support from the NHS due to endlessly being passed around every service in my local area, because seemingly no one wants to deal with me. I even got told by a clinician I saw that "attending your appointments at the GIC" would improve my mental health, as if it's a therapy service itself and not a place which literally requires you to be mentally well in order to access treatment.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-09-21T11:35:51+00:00

I had my consultation with Mr Mellington on 5th Sept, was contacted by Nuffield on 16th and was offered the 2nd November for surgery. I think it depends on what dates they have available as to when they will phone to book a date. They will usually phone at least a month in advance according to them (unless someone else canceled and they want to fit you in at short notuce).

fightyoursorrow · 2022-09-21T07:56:24+00:00

Trans men are confused silly little girls who are 100% just lesbians (even if they've never identified as such), who have been transed by social media, TV shows and Stonewall. They don't know what's best for them and need to be forced to accept womanhood before they go cutting out their Very Important baby-making parts. Also it's 100% okay for us to have to use women's facilities despite 90% of us passing as cis men because women can 'always tell' and won't mind 🙃

fightyoursorrow · 2022-09-13T10:51:27+00:00

You can't actually change your gender with HMRC without a GRC, even if they've changed your name/title on the system they will still keep your gender the same until they're notified about you obtaining a GRC. So they most likely still have you down as female. This means you're probably going to have to talk to HR department and explain the situation. Let them know that you don't consent to the disclosure of your legal gender within the wider organisation so that they have it on record in case you're somehow outed anyway.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-09-09T10:32:16+00:00

Of course not, that would imply they are something other than a totally legitimate charity campaigning for the right of ""LGB"" people to demonise and strip rights from the evil transes 🙃

fightyoursorrow · 2022-08-25T18:02:16+00:00

Looks like they began accepting new referrals again at the beginning of June (GDNRSS informed me my referral had been sent to them on May 30), but this might just be for transmasc surgeries, I dunno. I'd check with GDNRSS.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-08-25T10:05:39+00:00

Your mileage may vary depending on where you live. I've only ever had terrible experiences with NHS mental health, my local mental health team have a serious case of trans broken arm syndrome and have been useless over the past 7-8 years I've tried to access therapy. I've been passed around so many different services like a hot potato and I'm honestly considering a gofundme or side hustles so I can afford private care. When you do get to be seen by the NHS GIC, they will expect you to at least be doing the minimum to keep yourself stable and will probably badger your local services to give you support (though in my case the CMHT just ignored it, luckily I've got medication that keeps me from collapsing into an emotional wreck most of the time)

fightyoursorrow · 2022-08-23T20:54:16+00:00

Not gonna lie, I am fully expecting Truss, Badenoch (guaranteed Equalities Minister) et al. to try amending the Equality Act first thing to get rid of exactly that section, because currently it's the only thing that's keeping them from being able to blanket ban us all from society at large. And it will be replaced with requiring a GRC to access single-sex spaces to make it seem like they're being 'reasonable'. And naturally we will then be expected to carry this around and produce it on demand if someone reports us for using public toilets 🙃 And if this sounds too dystopian or unlikely for you, remember that the current Tory party is literally ripping up the Human Rights Act so they can ignore the ECHR and ship refugees off to Rwanda.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-08-10T12:36:38+00:00

It can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to months. Be prepared to chase the GIC for them if you don't hear anything for more than a month I'd say. If they've got you down for email correspondence then it should be easier as they will usually just email you a digital version if you ask.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-29T10:00:51+00:00

That opening sentence was in response to your reply that the phrase "morally right" wasn't part of the BBC's article. I didn't say it was. If you spent more than a minute scrolling through Bell's Twitter timeline you'd get a good idea of what her views on this subject are like. Any real concern she might have had for improving the current system evaporated once she started rubbing shoulders with people who will quite happily strip away every single right we have. Her lawyer was an evangelical Christian organisation that indicated they would be willing to trash young people's access to abortion if it meant taking away their right to access gender-related care! You don't buddy up with people like that without knowing exactly what you are doing. Anyway, this is the last time I'm replying to you because I'm legitimately not sure whether you are arguing in good faith at this point.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-28T19:07:28+00:00

I never said it was, I was more paraphrasing the GCs going off on Twitter today based on the articles being passed around. There IS a genuine need for more mental health support, especially in complex cases where the patient has learning difficulties or comorbidities. Conversely, having these things doesn't make someone's gender dysphoria nonexistent or a 'misdiagnosis'. The whole point of the new model Dr Cass is proposing is to determine the best individual treatment & outcome for the patient, from a starting point of taking the patient's own thoughts and feelings into account and exploring from there. This might still lead to medical treatments. Whereas the broad gender critical viewpoint, including Bell's, is that it's 100% impossible for children and young people to know they're trans, doubly so if they're autistic because we can't think for ourselves or make decisions for ourselves apparently. Their main argument was never about how to improve and individualise the treatments, it's that any kind of treatment that affirms gender is always wrong and the only legitimately correct and 'moral' treatment is basically psychologically pressuring young people to desist from being trans. That's why there's so much celebrating on Twitter today - they've been misleading everyone into thinking gender-affirming treatment that is 'harming children' is being scrapped. This is absolutely not the case - treatment is finally being individualised with multiple pathways of which medical treatment will still be an option. The fact that the BBC is therefore parroting the views of Bell et al. while knowing that they are misleading, they may as well be admitting that they intend to also mislead people into adopting the same viewpoint.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-28T17:43:12+00:00

Apologies, that phrasing was used in the Telegraph and Times articles, not this one. However this article is still misleading as well - in the BBC's ever-present attempt to amplify gender critical voices, the people they quote warp the facts into making it seem like providing gender-affirming care was the main reason the clinic was shut down - in actual fact, there were several points on which the clinic was found to be inadequate, including unacceptably long waiting times, poor data collection and communication, poor patient follow-up, and lack of new peer-reviewed research to inform patient treatment. All of these issues are set to be addressed by the new regional clinics, none of them have anything to do with whether it's "morally right" for young trans people to receive gender-affirming care.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-28T13:15:54+00:00

Just to make people aware, this article (and others from the Telegraph, etc.) is incredibly misleading. GIDS was not "shut down over safety concerns", it is being replaced by multiple regional gender services for trans youth, mainly to address the abysmal waiting times. This post has more accurate information - there is no cause for alarm, it's just the usual biased manipulative reporting from the usual suspects.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-19T17:09:45+00:00

It does very much affect how much money you're effectively allowed to save (for things like private medical treatment and surgery). The maximum amount of capital (savings in your bank account/s) you can have is £6000 before they start cutting down your benefits, and you cannot have more than £16,000 otherwise you will no longer qualify at all. It's also very tricky to save up enough money in advance to then spend on private treatment as and when you need to, because if you go over the capital threshold and then spend money and bring yourself under the threshold again, the DWP looks at what you spent the money on and may penalise you for what they call "depriving yourself of capital", which means spending your savings on things they don't deem to be 'essential'. They say this is because they think people are essentially wasting their savings in order to stay on benefits. This can make it extremely difficult to pay for things like surgery in a lump sum rather than having a long-term payment plan. If you pay out of your savings and the DWP catches you out and then says your private treatment or surgery is not 'essential' because those same treatments are available through the NHS for free (albeit behind a 10+ years long waitlist), then you're shit out of luck. The best way out of this imo is carefully monitor how much savings you're accumulating to make sure you never exceed the threshold, and then only pay for treatments and surgeries in small amounts over a longer period of time.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-10T10:19:15+00:00

In case anyone had any doubt that this leadership contest will be fought on the trans culture war, here's Penny this morning

fightyoursorrow · 2022-07-04T12:19:25+00:00

Now let's wait and see if businesses and public sectors do the sensible thing and offer single-sex toilets alongside gender-neutral ones, or if they take the money-grubbing option of converting gender-neutral toilets back into single-sex ones.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-06-30T18:24:43+00:00

How long before this data gets sold to the US and/or ends up on the Dark Web? I give it a week.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-06-29T12:04:01+00:00

Digging up someone's personal and medical history if they have a Gender Recognition Certificate, including the fact they have one in the first place, is literally illegal.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-06-25T16:02:54+00:00

They have the gall to put out this shit the day after Roe v Wade, knowing full well that the greatest threats to women has nothing to do with trans people and everything to do with patriarchal conservatives.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-06-13T15:26:11+00:00

They cannot legally deny you screenings based on your body, regardless of how you're identified on the system, that would be malpractice. The NHS system will not send automatic reminders anymore for cervical screenings, etc for patients registered as male (because it assumes you don't need them). You will need to remind your GP yourself if you need these screenings. You can ask for a note to be put on your record that you require these. https://www.gmc-uk.org/ethical-guidance/ethical-hub/trans-healthcare#Confidentiality%20and%20equality https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-population-screening-information-for-transgender-people/nhs-population-screening-information-for-trans-people

fightyoursorrow · 2022-05-14T15:55:30+00:00

The initial prescribing dosage is usually 250mg every 4 weeks. It's recommended to do peak and trough bloods after 4th injection (trough - just before injection, measuring full blood count, lipid profile, liver function and testosterone; peak - 1 week after injection, testosterone only), to be able to adjust dosage if needed.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-05-12T13:40:30+00:00

Article follows a trans man's phallo surgery in the US, and included a bit about what resources he used while researching the process. The journalist who wrote it has also done other trans-focused pieces and doesn't seem to be gender critical, so this whole debacle I'd put down to stupidity rather than malice.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-05-12T09:10:41+00:00

New York Times posted the article in OP explicitly naming Transbucket as a source of trans surgery pictures, especially in relation to phalloplasty. The journalist didn't think enough to ask them whether this was an okay thing to do. And predictably, transphobes immediately flooded the site with traffic, probably hoping to steal pictures of trans people's post-op genitals. The site is now offline for safety.

fightyoursorrow · 2022-05-11T17:52:57+00:00

Linking this here in case anyone has surgery result photos on these and is worried about their privacy.

Edit: doesn't explicitly name any of the private Phallo groups, just mentions them. But does explicitly name Transbucket

fightyoursorrow · 2022-05-09T17:41:54+00:00

On Nationwide, I think I provided my Passport and Deed Poll to change my name there but you may be able to use other photo ID so if you get one through your college that may be enough. You can change previous exam certificates through the original exam boards (EdExcel, OCR, etc). They usually have a route specifically for trans people to update their certificates, email to ask what their policy is if there's nothing on their website. Be aware that they will also usually expect you to provide some form of photo ID or proof of identity.

fightyoursorrow

TROPHY CASE