Jolyon must be feeling So Important.

Review dismisses claims youth suicides rose after NHS curbed puberty blockers

A government-ordered review has dismissed claims that suicide rates in young people with gender dysphoria have risen sharply since the NHS restricted access to puberty-blocking drugs.

A report by the government’s adviser on suicide prevention also found that the claims – made by the campaign group the Good Law Project – were not supported by data and could prompt children under the age of 18 to take their own life.

See there? A shoutout to Jolyon and his project – a shoutout saying he was wrong at best and lying at worst, but hey, it’s still a shoutout. He does love attention, that man.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, last week asked Prof Louis Appleby, a leading authority on mental health at Manchester University, to look at suicide rates among current and former patients of the now-discontinued gender identity development service (Gids) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust.

He looked, and reported he had found no evidence to back up the claims.

“The data do not support the claim that there has been a large rise in suicide by young patients attending the gender services at the Tavistock since the High Court ruling in 2020 or after any other recent date,” his analysis concluded. It covered the care received by and outcomes seen among patients of the London-based specialist mental heath trust.

The Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, said in response: “I was not contacted in advance of the statement being released and will obviously need time to respond. I do have difficulties with the figures and analysis and will respond in due course.”

Diddums wasn’t contacted. Diddums is caught saying untrue things about suicide among teenagers and Diddums is annoyed that he wasn’t contacted.

As well as finding no evidence to support the suicide claims, Appleby also highlighted “the way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against [Samaritans] guidance on safe reporting of suicide”.

“The claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence,” he added.

He flagged up the possibility of “already-distressed adolescents hearing the message that ‘people like you, facing similar problems, are killing themselves’, leading to imitative suicide or self-harm”.

Which many people have been pointing out to Maugham all along, and which he has determinedly ignored.