From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Lauren Schwartz, MD –https://www.americaoutloud.news/mental-health-and-gender-care-with-dr-lauren-schwartz/
Words mean everything. There is a growing movement in certain medical circles to change the name of obesity to make it more patient friendly. Adiposity-Based Chronic Disease (ABCD) was proposed in 2016 but hasn’t seemed to have caught on. Abortion services became reproductive health. That one stuck.
Sex-change surgery is now called gender affirming care. Sex-change sounded a bit clownish since most people knew you really could not change your sex. Except for some rare conditions, a person is born with a set of XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomes. Gender affirming care sounds so compassionate, so medically reasonable to physically change a person to comport with the gender by which he or she wants to, as they say, “identify as.” But it is some sort of delusion that injecting children with drugs will magically turn them into the opposite sex. The wordsmithing seems to have no limits. One child psychologist at a major medical center has suggested that children can identify as “gender hybrids.” The Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services agrees with eliminating the word “mother” in exchange for “egg carrier” or “gestational parent,” or birthing parent.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers advice on “chest feeding.”
Changing words is reminiscent of George Orwell’s “Newspeak,” used in his oft-cited novel, 1984.The point of Newspeak was to control the language and discourage individual thought and critical thinking. Unfortunately, the medical establishment has demonstrated that it is not immune from making medical decisions based on the winds of politics. It seems this frightening trend to put ideology over science will result in permanent scarring of some of our most precious and vulnerable human beings.
There is hope. More and more states and sports groups are recognizing the unfairness and safety concerns of permitting biological men to compete in women’s sports. Nineteen states have laws protecting youth from medical procedures that would likely permanently and do irreparable harm to their bodies. Mind you, we are talking about minors, not adults who are presumably mature and capable of thinking through a serious decision.
My guest will explore these issues and much more. She, like so many other good doctors, believes instead of injecting politics we should exercise our duty as physicians to treat every patient with developmentally appropriate, comprehensive care, dignity, respect, empathy and compassion through excellence in medicine and mental health.
Bio
Dr. Lauren Schwartz is a psychiatrist certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine with distinction and completed her residency in psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma’s Health Sciences Center with additional training in psychoanalytic theory through Oklahoma’s psychoanalytic society. She is currently in private practice in Oklahoma, applying a psychodynamic approach to both psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. Most recently she has collaborated with Dr. Miriam Grossman and authored 2 appendices for Dr. Grossman’s book, “Lost in Trans Nation, A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness.”
