By Catherine Saxbe, M.D.
Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
ABPN-Certified in General Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
In the analytical and illuminating documentary, The Detransition Diaries, women recovering from medicalized gender transition recount the lucrative medical industry’s harrowing role in augmenting their struggles for self-acceptance. Doctors corroborated their patients’ desires that their natal female sex, perceived and catastrophized as a defect, could be corrected, reinforcing that the gender-questioning girls, overwhelmed by adolescent self-loathing and seeking an idealized cure-all, were appropriate candidates for life-changing, invasive, and off-label medical treatments. The young women were prescribed testosterone after cursory, introductory consultations and eventually counseled to undergo double breast amputations for their psychological distress, without adequate disclosure or discussion of the significant side effects on mood, aggression, cognition, and multiple organ systems. The film deconstructs the pre-, post- and active phases of gender-affirming treatment, which for the interviewees propelled a descent into worse mental health states than before the interventions.
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