Govt review debunks claims that puberty blockers ban fuels suicide

The Government’s proposal to permanently ban puberty blockers would not cause more gender-confused children to commit suicide, new research has suggested.

Prof Louis Appleby, the Department of Health and Social Care’s advisor on suicide prevention, debunked trans activists’ claims that there has been an “explosion” of Tavistock patients committing suicide due to restricted access to puberty-blocking drugs over recent years.

The Good Law Project, which posted the claims on social media, is taking legal action against the previous Government’s temporary ban on puberty blockers that Health Secretary Wes Streeting intends to make permanent.

‘Bias’

But in the independent report, Prof Appleby concluded that claims of increased suicides are “not unbiased” and fail to meet “basic standards for statistical evidence”.

He found that of the twelve Tavistock patients who committed suicide between 2018 and 2024, each was at a different point in the clinical process, “suggesting no consistent link to any one aspect of care”. In addition, they all had “multiple social and clinical risk factors for suicide”.

The professor criticised social media users for promoting a “distressing and dangerous” narrative. He said this increases the risk that “families will be terrified by predictions of suicide as inevitable without puberty blockers”, while young people may be led to imitate suicide or self-harm.

He emphasised: “Suicide should not be a slogan or a means to winning an argument. To the families of 200 teenagers a year in England, it is devastating and all too real.”

‘Weaponisation’

Bayswater Support, a group representing parents with gender-confused children, commented: “The weaponisation of suicide by activists and even professionals to coerce parents and children to believe they need to medicalise their child has undoubtedly been responsible for many children being harmed.

“We are very grateful that the Government and Louis Appleby sent out a clear message that the exploitation of suicide statistics is false and dangerously irresponsible.”

Writing in The Times, columnist Libby Purves also called on activists to stop ‘blackmailing’ families with suicide in order to “promote a fashionable ideology”.

Restrictions

Under temporary regulations in force until 3 September, young people in Britain are no longer able to obtain puberty blockers via private prescriptions from the UK or Europe.

NHS England, Scotland and Wales have stopped routinely prescribing the experimental drugs for new child patients, while Northern Ireland did so in 2020.