Parshall Partners

Burying the Evidence

         At the core of the ideology of “transgenderism”, is a person who struggles with a mental health issue.  Compassionate care necessarily raises the issue of whether or not puberty blockers help or hurt a young person’s mental health, and now, we have an answer to that question.

         The NIH had granted a $10 million study, in the form of a nine-year grant, to the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. The study was under the leadership of Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, an internationally recognized expert in the care of transgender and gender-diverse individuals. For more than two decades, she has been advancing clinical care and research for people with gender identity issues. The grant was to study the effect of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on minors.

         The study looked at children as young as eight and as old as 20 and noted that:

“Over 2 years of medical intervention that started with blockers, mental health remained relatively stable and was on par with the population at large. These youth showed no worsening of their mental or emotional health and suicidality decreased from baseline to 24 months. Mean scores on mental health measures remain stable in a clinically non-significant range over two years.”

         The study is alleging that the puberty blockers didn’t hurt the mental health of minors. Advocates continually chant that the puberty drugs offer an antidote to suicidal thoughts of struggling minors and is therefore a “lifesaving treatment”, when in fact, it is not. The study actually found that taking puberty blockers and hormone treatments found no improvement in youth mental health.

         According to a House Oversight committee, the results of the study were buried by activists. One congresswoman who sits on the committee said:

“We are alarmed that the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, is withholding publication of the project’s research findings which cast doubt on the efficacy of the ‘gender affirming’ model, because she believes the findings could be ‘weaponized’ by critics of transgender medical interventions for children.”

         The House Oversight Committee also noted:

“One research study in this project, known as the Trans Youth Care (TYC) study, gave medical puberty blockers to 95 children in the early stages of puberty and observed subsequent mental health outcomes over two years. Dr. Olson-Kennedy has implied there have been no clinical impacts on mental health in the TYC cohort after initiating puberty blockers. However, a 2020 paper authored by TYC researchers conflicts with Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s account of the cohort as being in good mental health before the study began. According to this paper, the children in the TYC cohort did experience troubling mental health symptoms when the study began”

         When the study didn’t provide the results the activists wanted, they simply buried the study.  The take away? Don’t always listen to the experts, rather listen to that “still, small voice” giving you all the wisdom you need as a parent and look well to the ways of your household.

         Those are my thoughts. I’m Janet Parshall.