Heather Sells

Pennsylvania Psychological Association forbids any mention on its professional listserv of Britain's Cass Review about pediatric gender medicine, points to @WPATH guidelines instead This despite the fact that the Cass Review deemed that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's guidelines on pediatric gender-transition treatment weren't scientifically rigorous. In a recent email to over 1,000 members of the Pennsylvania branch of the American Psychological Association @APA, the PPA’s leadership denounced Britain’s Cass Review, which found that pediatric gender-transition treatment is based on "remarkably weak evidence," as "failing to meet the professional standard" of the PPA's adherence to "evidence-based practices." Accordingly, the PPA forbade any further mention of the Cass Review on the listserv. The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, despite being adamant that it was being transparent with its members about the reason for forbidding discussion of the Cass Review, did not specify in its email why it believed that the review did not meet the group's evidence-based standards. Instead, in explaining its new policy, the PPA said that members of the LGBTQIA+ community on the listserv and their allies felt "targeted, harmed, and hurt" by the sharing of the Cass Review. As an alternative, the PPA recommended that members reference WPATH's Standards of Care 8 and the APA's policy statement on gender-affirming care. This came after the Cass Review found that the WPATH's guidelines “lack developmental rigor” and that the document “overstates the strength of the evidence.” The University of York systematic literature reviews (there were two parts) that concerned global guidelines on pediatric gender-transition treatment found that WPATH's guidelines were flawed due to engaging in what Cass subsequently characterized as "circularity" in their citations with other guidelines. This practice is more pejoratively known as "citation washing," in which the scientific buck essentially stops nowhere—there is no original study that solidly backs a particular claim. The University of York team deemed that the APA's 2015 policy statement on gender-affirming care for children (which has since been updated) had poor rigor of development. This move by the PPA to forbid discussion of the Cass Review directly follows the unsealing of internal WPATH communications in an Alabama court case regarding the development of the Standards of Care 8 that showed that some of WPATH’s own members knew that their guidelines were based on weak evidence. One WPATH leader stated in an email to colleagues that “we are painfully aware of the gaps in the literature and the kinds of research that are needed to support our recommendations.” Additionally, the unsealed communications revealed that WPATH suppressed systematic literature reviews it commissioned from evidence-based medicine experts at Johns Hopkins University about the treatment of gender dysphoria when the findings did not support WPATH's goals. WPATH also capitulated to outside pressure to remove age restrictions on pediatric gender-transition treatment and surgeries from the Biden administration, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Trevor Project. The email to PPA members was signed by Allyson L. Galloway, president, Meghan Prato, communications board chair, and Michelle Wonders, EMCC chair.

Catherine talks with Jim & Heather Sells, authors of the new book “Beyond the Clinical Hour: How Counselors Can Partner with the Church to Address the Mental Health Crisis.” Go to keyminstry.org/podcast to listen now!

The global mental health crisis is growing faster than our existing mental health care system can address. We need collaboration, where counselors and churches face this issue together. 'Beyond the Clinical Hour' shows us how. Available now at ivpress.com/beyond-the-cli…