Sweden Pulls Back from Gender Affirming Care on Minors: 'Good Psychosocial Care Is Fundamental'
Sweden has officially announced that it is pulling away from providing transgender treatment to minors.
Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) recently changed its treatment guidelines for children with gender dysphoria admitting that "care has been characterized by both deficiencies in accessibility and a lack of knowledge about the results of the care."
In May, the board officially ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors under age 18, but now the board is cutting back on providing mastectomies to minors as well.
"Young people who suffer from gender dysphoria need to be able to quickly receive an investigation and be offered adequate care measures, based on the health and medical services' assessments of the care needs. Good psychosocial care is fundamental," Thomas Lindén, head of the department at the National Board of Health and Welfare, explained in the updated guideline.
In the past, NBHW championed gender-affirming care adopting a policy that pushed providing puberty blockers to girls as young as eight years old.
But now the board is going to practice precaution in providing transgender treatment.
"It is important that children and young people who suffer from gender dysphoria are taken seriously, treated well, and offered adequate care," Lindén said.
Sweden is one of several countries halting gender-affirming care after finding there is insufficient evidence to back that it is beneficial to minors.
As CBN's Faithwire reported, England's National Health Service recommended that doctors limit gender medical treatments for children.
In a draft guidance, healthcare providers were told young, pre-pubescent children should be treated based on "evidence that, in most cases, gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to push for transgender treatment in minors.
Earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra confirmed that the Biden administration supports using taxpayer dollars to cover gender transition procedures for minors and adults that healthcare providers have determined are "medically necessary."
Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, suggests the U.S. take a look at Sweden's approach to handling the issue.
"[Sweden's] recommendation makes clear that, despite the caterwauling of gender-ideology warriors, there is no general scientific agreement — much less certainty — on how to best care for children with gender dysphoria, nor is there currently the depth of knowledge or the kind of systematically collected evidence required to assume that certainty. The recent spike in cases warrants an investigation as it may indicate a social contagion, akin to how youth suicide can sometimes proliferate," he explained.
Smith continued, "It is most unfortunate that our government and most social-media platforms continue to stifle these important discussions — just as they did, with catastrophic results, during the Covid pandemic. What is really needed now is not the suppression of opinions but open and robust debate in the medical community and among the public as to how we might best treat children for what might be an essentially psychological condition."
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