Although the real dangers of sex-changing drugs and treatments have been proven time and time again, more and more doctors are choosing to adopt “gender-affirming” procedures for confused teenagers.
While we should be treating the many underlying mental health struggles of gender-confused youth, they are instead being ignored or minimized.
The story of one doctor – who has chosen to ignore the mental wellbeing of her patients – illustrates perfectly what we face.
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy is one of the leading “transgender-affirming” physicians in the country.
Although numerous doctors and researchers have cautioned against the dangers of administering “transition” drugs and surgeries without forethought, Dr. Olson-Kennedy continues to prescribe these dangerous treatments for young people who question their biological sex.
Recently, Olson-Kennedy admitted that many of her young patients struggle with mental illness.
Many physicians now agree that gender dysphoria is a real and treatable mental illness.
Gender dysphoria is a condition in which a person experiences confusion and discontent with their biological body.
Many people with gender dysphoria seek drastic gender-changing treatments when they should be offered counseling for their underlying mental illness instead.
“Changing” their gender won’t help them: only a transformation in their outlook will.
But physicians like Olson-Kennedy ignore this fact and press drugs, hormonal treatments, and surgeries on their suffering patients.
Olson-Kennedy herself is shockingly blasé about the mental health of her patients.
“Thirty percent of my sample [of patients] had moderate to severe depression symptoms,” Olson-Kennedy stated in a recent presentation. “[49 percent of them] thought about suicide.”
“Over 30 percent attempted suicide,” she continued.
However, Dr. Olson-Kennedy seems unconcerned by these statistics, as well as the fact that teenagers were experiencing mental illness so profoundly, they attempted to end their lives.
Instead of directing her patients to counseling and therapy, Olson-Kennedy seeks to immediately prescribe hormonal treatment drugs and surgeries in order to satisfy temporary desires for change.
She clearly believes that the transgender agenda is more important than the mental health—and lives—of her young patients.
Olson-Kennedy is an enthusiastic supporter of the transgender movement and believes she should use her profession and skills to further its agenda.
“I was really moved by the idea that, as a pediatrician, I could do this miraculous thing for people and help them live authentically,” she said, reflecting on her use of medicine to promote gender transition.
“I’ve always been involved in social-justice movements, and this idea that my training as a physician could play a role in a human-rights movement was very compelling to me.”
Shouldn’t an ethical physician serve her patients first, not a social justice movement?
Nevertheless, Olson-Kennedy forges ahead in her work, even when her patients clearly need counseling and help.
“[There was] a lot of drug use [in my patients],” the doctor reported. “A lot of kids were sexually active, and a not insignificant number of my kids have actually done sex work [prostitution].”
Yes, you read that correctly.
Olson-Kennedy’s patients — some as young as thirteen years-old — have been sexually trafficked, abused, taken advantage of, and then conned into believing that gender surgery and hormonal treatments will heal them.
In fact, these treatments can only harm them in the long run.
Olson-Kennedy reported that 40 percent of her patients were “lost to follow-up” after initial treatment with hormonal drugs. In other words, they didn’t come back to her office, and she’s not concerned at all.
These are the troubled patients who reported experiences in prostitution. They are the children who were depressed, suicidal, and in desperate need of help.
But according to Olson-Kennedy, her responsibility as a doctor ends when she prescribes drugs or surgeries to these impressionable and vulnerable children.
Yet studies have shown that children who take these drugs and pursue gender-transitioning treatments remain suicidal. Rather than healing their mental illness and trauma, transgender treatments only hurt patients further.
It’s a tragedy when a social justice movement takes precedence over the health and well-being of young people everywhere.
Dr. Olson-Kennedy isn’t alone in her views. She’s joined by a multitude of other physicians and practitioners who, in seeking to bolster the transgender and “LGBT” agenda, have abandoned their medical ethics.
Pray for the removal of Dr. Olson-Kennedy and others from the medical scene, and pray for the young people affected by gender dysphoria and mental health struggles.
May they realize the truth about their gender and find appropriate and healing treatments.