Fr Ted creator/writer Graham Linehan Arrested over posts on Transgender issues

I'd be interested to know when exactly the possibility of medications, treatments or even surgeries are being suggested to children and at what age this is happening at the earliest.

A lot of pro-trans literature focusses, for example, on things like little boys wanting to wear dresses or wanting to play with dolls.

What if my son decides he wants to wear a dress and my stance is "fine, let him wear a dress"? At what point is the idea of medication or surgery coming into our lives? What if I then say "no thanks, I'm just going to let him wear what he wants and do what he wants but no meds or surgery for us thanks?"

There needs to be proper investigation into how kids are becoming convinced that they can't just BE another gender and that's that but rather that the only way to go is medication and, maybe some day, surgery.

Grief is meant to last two weeks?? My friend lost her husband 6 weeks ago and she’s only beginning to pick herself up in the last couple of weeks. Even if they mean that initial devastating period of grief I don’t see how it can always be limited to such a short period.

Concerning the DSM, I agree it has become a way to boost drug sales but there’s also psychiatric medicine’s very dark history as a weapon of social control. I think they are trying so hard now to remove that judgmental aspect that they’re now normalising some things that perhaps shouldn’t be.

So now they’ve created a contradiction where sexual identity is not an illness (fine) but they also need to pathologise it - how else to provide hormones and carry out surgery?

And there’s definitely a large degree of “We have a drug for that, let’s find a disease we can treat with it.”

A year sounds right for a major loss. Two weeks sounds like losing something/someone you didn't care that much about. I think many people take a lot more than 2 weeks to get over a pet dying, never mind a significant person in their life.

I can only agree that it's about pathologising normal, but difficult, life events. And puberty is tough. In my experience it was anyway. For a number of reasons - but changes in other people's attitude towards you (well, men, and boys, to be blunt) was a really significant part of why it was so hard.

AFAICT there is still a 12 month "pathological grief" category, but there's also this:

PROPOSAL TO ELIMINATE THE MAJOR DEPRESSION BEREAVEMENT EXCLUSION

This was perhaps the most controversial diagnostic proposal since depathologization of homosexuality. Grief sometimes triggers a major depressive disorder (MDD). However, some depressive symptoms, such as depressed mood, insomnia, decreased interest, decreased appetite, and lack of concentration, are general-distress symptoms that frequently occur in normal grief 1. Thus, normal grief can satisfy the DSM's 5-symptoms-for-2-weeks criterion for MDD, yielding a mistaken “false positive” MDD diagnosis. The bereavement exclusion (BE) rectified this situation by distinguishing as normal those “uncomplicated” grief-related depressive episodes that included only general distress symptoms and remitted quickly. “Complicated” episodes were classified as MDD, despite the recent loss, if they included pathosuggestive symptoms such as psychomotor retardation, suicidal ideation, sense of worthlessness, or lengthy duration. The BE's elimination means that two weeks of general-distress depressive symptoms after death of a loved one falls under MDD.

I don't really understand the distinction TBH, but that's just from a quick google.

I think there's clearly a problem when such a large proportion of the population is being "diagnosed" with something - surely by definition 1/4 of teenage boys are not ill? Either there is massive overdiagnosis, or they are simply towards one end of the long spectrum of social ease in relationships, tendency to worry etc.

It's really rather odd how many of the very same people who (claim to) think that sex is a spectum believe that mental health, autism or even just "neurodivergence" are absolutes. Especially with autism, where the previous distinction between "autism" and what used to be called Aspergers has now been removed for a global definition of a "spectrum of autism". No wonder numbers are spiralling.

I have several young people in my life with such a diagnosis, and while I can clearly see the points they have in common and am in no way denying that they have difficulties, it seems equally obvious to me that the "spectrum" is actually one that goes all the way to - and includes - "no signs of autism", rather than a binary Yes(autistic) or No(not autistic). IOW it's also personality and character, not "miswiring". Or else we are all slightly miswired, which is quite possible too.

My point being, giving lots of extra help to 25% of boys with ADHD, and/or a diagnosis of autism, and none at all to at least the next 25% is wildly unfair on one of those groups. Either the next 25% also need some help, or the 25% getting the ADHD diagnosis are not being properly helped by such a blanket diagnosis. TBH, for many of them, I suspect the latter.

I know nothing about him so I can't comment but I agree that psychiatric and mental health issues are still problematic, and I think part of the problem is that we've put them firmly into the "medical science" category when in fact we're not able to research them, nor even just identify them, with anything like the certainty of cancer or a heart attack.

And yes, I know that, for ex. cancer, is not always easy to diagnose with certainty either, but the point is there are biological tests. Interpreting them requires skill and even then often contains a degree of uncertainty, but it's still different from many mental health issues.

But when I worked in clinical research, a good few years ago now, one of the biggest problems with testing new drugs for mental health diagnoses such as depression, was the frequency with which the known placebo (or the current gold standard treatment) being given as the control treatment in a double blind study would get results that were statistically as good as, or sometimes even better than, the drug being trialed. That's likely because efficacy of mental health treatments is so therapist-dependent. The more the patient likes and trusts their therapist, the better the results. And of course in a trial, one thing the patient gets is lots of attention. So many drugs seem really promising in studies, while out in the real world, when a busy GP shoves them at an exhausted new mother, or a grieving parent, they don't have nearly as much effect.

ETA: Also: "against mammograms" - that depends what you mean. Mammograms are not an unalloyed good either. I won't go into the reasons here, but it really depends. Just one example: a friend's maternal line has the BRCA gene in it. Her sister did all the mammograms suggested from an early age, got a positive result and had a mastectomy. The subsequent "full" biopsy showed that she hadn't had cancer after all, just a few dodgy cells that would almost certainly have been fine with much more limited treatment. Possibly even no treatment (cancerous cells can and do get "cleared up" by the body's immune system quite regularly.) Meanwhile a young woman has been left with lymphodoema, which is a debilitating condition with little effective treatment. Just bad luck. My friend, who chose not to do the gene test, and not to have multiple mammograms, is still fine 25 years later. Of course she could have been dead of breast cancer by now - who knows? Which is the point.

No, everyone is not neurodiverse to a certain extent. Not all autistic people are non verbal

But those are two entirely different things.

Because what does "non neurodiverse" actually mean? A subset of the population that's exactly fitted in all ways to fit perfectly into OUR society as it is today? How many would that be? Probably a minority. And what happens when society evolves - this "perfectly neuro-standard" group evolve as well? Or would some get left behind?

Or do you mean they are so neurostandard as to fit into ANY society, despite all the variations that entails? I'd say that's impossible.

That's why I think the idea of non neurodivergence is meaningless. Everyone has their own quirks and difficulties. Some people have more than others. But it's not a binary "Yes you're neurodivergent" vs "No you're bog standard". Though I can see quite why some "neurodiverse" people - especially the self diagnosed (I know several) - like to see it that way.

And autism, if we include what used to be Aspbergers, is simply a broad range of the far end of that spectrum, starting with people who are just a bit socially awkward, and going all the way to people who are non verbal. But TBH I think it was a really bad idea to lump those all in together. They don't have the same needs. It's like deciding there's an illness called "fever" - yes the symptoms may be similar but that doesn't improve care for all of them.

That’s just an excuse for a deliberate government-led funding crisis. The SEND program isn’t fit for purpose mainly because councils have handed over local authority assessments and statement/report writing to cheap private companies that are making a balls of it. They’ve been making a balls of it since 2014 (when I was involved in SEND) and blaming parents for their cock-ups.
What HMG really mean: the way councils have been forced to deal with SEND is unsustainable. Tory governments stopped funding SEND support/education and told Councils to sort it out through their own local budgets many moons ago. And now it seems that some local Burrough Councils across the U.K. are teetering on edge of bankruptcy.

Kids don’t improve without support, they get worse. Support has become more and more difficult to access - the correlation obvious.

To correct a myth that High Functioning Autism is easier, or less in need of support or a diagnosis is very wrong. Parents often struggle to cope with and mentally support higher functioning children because kids/young people are more aware of the extreme limits with their social communication skills or executive functioning abilities. Maintaining regulation to attend education or access learning can be very difficult. Suicide amongst this group is very high. They fall into the trans ideology too very easily, hoping to be understood and rescued.

With Trump’s government we have RJK in the US talking about vaccine damage, death or illness. He’s very dangerous because he is too vague and loose with meaning, but I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day and toxic overload via medication on autistic kids increases their difficulties.

Methylation and absorption through the gut is crucially important for many kids, never mind SEND kids, and yet the research on this is very slow to come through. Wouldn’t surprise me to find we are slowly poisoning our kids with increases of hyper activity coming from a body and brain overload with no means of regulating itself. Compare the toxicity of our environments and food industries present day to that of the 1980s. I suspect that is where we might find some answers, if only research was properly funded, independent and not politicised or pharma controlled.

Agree with everything you’ve written. Autism is a disability and as it’s so fecking complex, it cannot be understood at face value or singular witnessed experience.

Because one person manages okay in a college setting between the hours of 10 -3 pm, doesn’t mean that they’re not in brutal physical and mental pain by the time they get home. Some people sleep for hours, others cry.. and some I know can’t access college at all or can only attempt it two times a week.

Hidden co-morbidities are very common, sometimes so well hidden they take years to be diagnosed as an extra condition, and not something that is simply a part of an autism diagnosis.