What Happened at the Tavistock? A Conversation with Dr. Anna Hutchinson

Friday, March 31, 11:00 – 12:30 pm est

The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman Trust in North London, was set up initially to provide — for the most part — talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity. But in the last decade GIDS has referred more than a thousand children, some as young as nine years old, for medication to block their puberty. In the same period, the number of young people seeking GIDS’s help exploded, increasing twenty-five-fold. The profile of the patients changed too: from largely pre-pubescent boys to mostly adolescent girls, who were often contending with other difficulties.

Why had the patients changed so dramatically? Were all these distressed young people best served by taking puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, which cause irreversible changes to the body? While some young people appeared to thrive after taking the blocker, many seemed to become worse. Was there enough clinical evidence to justify such profound medical interventions in the lives of young people who had so much else to contend with?

Dr. Anna Hutchinson started work at GIDS in 2013. In her years at the service, she had a front row seat to the unfolding situation that resulted in the planned closure of the center this year. Dr. Hutchinson figures prominently in Hannah Barnes’ recent book “Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Services for Children.” She will join GETA’s Lisa Marchiano to discuss the implications of what happened at the Tavistock for good clinical practice.

A recording will be available to GETA members after the event. We cannot make to recording available to non-GETA members.