Your last words, you are not alone, make me cry b/c as a parent I feel so very alone. Literally no one I know cares about what is happening to my daughter and others. They don’t want to know. It is too ugly. Thank you for writing your experience b/c my daughter was admitted to a psychiatric hospital twice - once in 2021 after freshman college COVID isolation and again a few months later for suicide attempt. Now she lives aaa a boy. My eyes have been opened to the disgusting corruption within our government and institutions and I am utterly devastated. Every day I feel like I am walking on Mars by myself. It’s horrifying to watch this happen to my daughter. Please keep sharing your experience.
Wow, thank you for writing this. This was very sad. I feel for the trans ID'd patient too. Thank you for sharing, we all need to have compassion. I hope that young man can be free from the delusion some day soon, and accept himself. He probably has people who love him and are worried about him.
“I don't agree with gender ideology, but I also don't hate transgender individuals. It was devastating for my transgender patient to be rejected like this. It was also completely preventable had an acceptance of the scientifically based biological definition of sex been embraced, instead of the "social/cultural" definition of gender.”
Your above paragraph sums up how a lot of us feel, I think. We get told we’re just terfs who ‘hate’ trans people. This simply isn’t true. I don’t hate anyone. I hate the ideology and I wish more people could understand that. I know someone who is trans and I like him very much.
It really is. I wonder how long it will take for these facilities to realize the gravity of their errors, and if they'll ever publicly apologize for and denounce their place in this tragic evil.
I retired as a clinical social worker in 2014, before this madness took off. It is incomprehensible to me that my profession has so completely lost it's mind and it's way in service to this completely irrational quasi-religious scarification cult. A cult that valorizes "child sacrifice" no less. Were I still working as a social worker today - no doubt I'd be sanctioned and probably dismissed from the profession for the henious crime of - "rational thought" - and for respecting the material scientific reality of - "sex."
You know, i was thinking more about this situation. And i think it's illustrative of the harms of gender affirming policies, yes, but also of some serious flaws in health care. I noticed a few things that fit with my own experience and that i have often thought were problematic:
1. This didn't happen in this particular case, but too often, I've seen (especially in psych) where the rape victim would have been accommodated, because she was swearing and yelling and waking up the whole unit while the Muslim woman was apparently calm and quieter about it, and also (to my reading) was perhaps using a bit more delicate words and tone with the TIM, therefore perhaps not escalating him so much (plus he was sedated). Far too much, I've seen the loudest and most aggressive patients get their way while the ones who try to be reasonable, or just quietly follow the rules even when it makes them extremely uncomfortable, get "calmed down" or, in psych, to "practice some distress tolerance". This is not only unfair, but it encourages bad behavior while sending the message that you can only get your needs met in the world with force-perhaps not what we want to teach people who are already unstable and dysregulated. So, a huge kudos to you and your colleagues who took steps to ensure EVERYONE had their needs met in this situation, regardless of their level of escalation (and this includes the TIM).
2. You mentioned something interesting here: you said, about the rape victim, that she didn't want to sleep with someone "with the equipment that had harmed her" (or something similar). This, i think, is another great reason that all patients should have access to single rooms. I know of numerous people of both sexes with PTSD. Let's say you have a woman who was viciously abused by her mother. She has no particular trauma surrounding male genitals, or male anything. But she sure does have significant issues when she is startled at night by ANYONE walking, talking, reading, or otherwise making their presence known in the space she is sleeping in. She may also, involuntarily and uncontrollably, yell, scream, swear, and cry, if not punch and kick in bed or while walking around, all while she sleeps or in the instant after being startled awake. Should she be forced to sleep a couple feet from a stranger, regardless of gender? (After all, her female roommate has the same equipment that harmed her, too...) Should another woman be forced to share a bedroom with this one, who will disrupt the sleep of any roommate and possibly even strike out at them physically, and who can't be "disciplined" or "motivated"to stop because she has no control over this behavior? Should any patient be forced to share a room with someone who has cognitive disabilities and may unknowingly and without ill intent do inappropriate or uncomfortable things?
The problem with deciding that some trauma is reason enough for "special"accommodations (meaning, to violate policy), and other trauma isn't, is that you encourage EVERYONE to exaggerate, alter, or falsify the details of their own life experience, and then reward them for doing so. I've seen situations similar to this turn into a real mess as patients see how someone else got a coveted single room (and gossip doesn't spread faster anywhere than in a psych unit!) and suddenly you have an entire unit of "traumatized rape victims" or "severe sleepwalkers" who will "decompensate" if placed in a double. This is unfair to those who truly have PTSD, as it will make people more skeptical of them and less accommodating over time. It's also unfair to those who choose not to lie, and grit their teeth to "follow the rules".
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing you at all; I'm not. I'm criticizing the way the system tends to ignore patient emotional needs-especially among psych patients and substance users-unless they go completely apeshit. How about we just meet everyone's needs? There is ample evidence to show that roommates are detrimental to a majority of both medical and psychiatric patients. I know this would require significant investment and infrastructure overhaul, but even some initial steps in the right direction would be welcome. Instead, i see consistent efforts by admin to get people to tolerate suboptimal (at least) conditions, then quickly do whatever it takes to shut them up when a few eventually blow their top. And it's incredibly frustrating for staffers, with no real power to change policy, who actually care about their patients AND who are left holding the bag when things go sideways in the middle of the night.
3. As I've mentioned in other comments, you said something else that stuck out, along the lines of "[nurses] are just there to medicate and keep people from escalating". This is too true not just of nurses but of the entire inpatient psych system-supposedly the "highest level of care". You mentioned you wondered if the man had had grief counseling, or when he began dressing the way he did. But due to the very short lengths of stay today, such things are considered strictly outpatient issues. Which does make sense given where we are, because it's not ideal for a patient to have staff they've known for an hour trying to explore all their psychological history and problems. And it's probably impossible for even the most skilled and dedicated therapist to really get a solid impression of the real problems in less than a week.
But, only the sickest, highest risk, most vulnerable patients are admitted at all now unless they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for a private, no insurance facility. These patients should be getting the best and most intensive care. "Higher level of care"should mean just that. Instead, it seems to be the opposite: most inpatients get minimal to no individual therapy, medication is almost always the center of every inpatient plan of care, and they don't stay long enough to even evaluate if the med changes are really effective or if they are viable long term. The real work gets relagated to the outpatient team. And a lucky few patients do have a great outpatient team who does brilliantly with this. The majority, though, (including most with the most difficult social situations and highest needs) have a patchwork of ever-changing, too-busy clinicians who range from disinterested to incompetent to competent-but-too-strapped-for-time-to-be-really-effective.
Don't get me wrong, gender affirmation policy needs to change. But it's actually just one of numerous changes that are needed if we are ever going to have a system that actually helps more people than it traumatizes, for the long term instead of placing cheap bandaids.
Oh, and ps: that feeling you got when you saw that your second admission was a Muslim woman? And the only available bed was with a biological male? "%&:$, this is just NOT gonna be a good night"? I know it well. And i sympathize.
This is really well-written, and from one health care worker to another, i have observed many of the same things: the older medical doctors playing along but not really giving a fig either way. The staff who do their best to manage ridiculous policies (and that goes far, far beyond just gender stuff) without losing their jobs or anyone getting hurt-too much, anyway.
But this was my favorite: "If a bad policy has any hope of being overturned, the patient’s natural reaction should guide that process with little to no interference on the part of staff. I may be wrong, but at least a handful of bad experiences must be played out before staff speaks up. That way the challenge comes from experience and not potential bias." I completely agree with you on this. I, personally, don't necessarily think people who advocate against policies like this on the basis of philosophy or sociopolitical views get very far most of the time, and often, what ends up happening is that due to their initial strong ideologocally-based response (even if it's correct), EVERYONE who voices any problem with that policy will be painted with the same "intolerant-biased" brush. I,too, have found it far more productive to allow situations to play out and THEN go to the administration with concrete examples of patient response. It can be really hard to let people suffer due to what you know is bad policy, but usually there really isn't any other option if you want to keep your job (and getting fired isn't going to help all the patients to come). No matter what you say, without actual patient incidents or complaints, admin is unlikely to change course.
My personal feeling is that this sort of tension is a big part of the burnout and moral injury along nurses but also most other professionals and staff in the health care system. It is SO hard to have no choice but to follow policy you know is harmful, and to watch patients suffer because of it-and then to be the one left cleaning up the mess at 3am to boot.
Thank you for caring so much about all your patients.
The utter stupidity of the regulations is breathtaking. Totally predictable responses to an intolerable situation from damaged patients, but what happens when the regulations are changed to FORCE their acquiescence? Are they going to be punished for their refusal? I guarantee that this scenario will occur somewhere soon, if not on this unit, then another.
I whole heartedly agree with this article. As an old nurse, I could never return to the profession with the gender conformity that is needed today. I am too set in my ways. As a mother of a daughter who believes she is male, I have seen the devastating effects on her beautiful body that will never be able to be changed. This is an unholy state of being we are in today being forced to accept a lie about false gender.
You didn't have a "transgender patient." No one is "transgender" and this is the entire point. Until this fact is understood the lies will never be removed from power. People just keep spreading the lies by using the made-up words and language that contain the lies. Using the language spreads and further entrenches the lies.
This sounds like the makings of a Hollywood movie. If you have not read the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, you should consider it. She recounts her tale (in a slim volume) of time spent in a psyche ward where she was one of the saner bulimics (or anorexics- I cannot remember). I believe it was made into a movie but cannot say I saw it. It baffles the mind how the psyche industry is used to push horrific agendas. Thank you for seeing the truth and being kind to the all patients including the trans male who needs compassion more anything else. Please keep reporting! I hope you can change the hearts and minds of your coworkers to stand their ground when confronted with the obvious and not cower to idiotic and harmful 'policy.'
Never has there been such a global brain rot on the loose in society such as this. It is so dark and wvil and twisted that it beggars belief. Honestly makes me believe that satan is real
Thank you for sharing this. I have wondered how healthcare workers are dealing with these patients! What a mess- it’s so obviously wrong to compromise the safety of female patients in the name of being kind. These policies need to change. Affirming is essentially lying and when medical professionals do this they are complicit in the harms caused by gender medicine. Biology is real and we need to get back to reality.
Thank you for sharing. ❤️ I am a female and the only time I ever needed hospitalization for depression was after being given a Depo Provera shot for “birth control”. I was 115 lb, 5’6’ and 19 years old. The injection was the same whether you weighed 300 lb or was a skinny little thing. Depo Provera is the SAME drug gender affirming care uses as a puberty blocker. Within a couple weeks of the injection I became very depressed and within a month I was suicidal. Mind you, I had never felt like this before in my life. It was 100% this awful drug. It took almost a whole year to feel like myself again and for the the drug to be out of my body. There absolutely needs to be more research into the hormone therapy + depression and suicide connection. I can tell you first hand that those drugs are powerful, dangerous and absolutely caused my depression. I’ve never had an issue since.
Your last words, you are not alone, make me cry b/c as a parent I feel so very alone. Literally no one I know cares about what is happening to my daughter and others. They don’t want to know. It is too ugly. Thank you for writing your experience b/c my daughter was admitted to a psychiatric hospital twice - once in 2021 after freshman college COVID isolation and again a few months later for suicide attempt. Now she lives aaa a boy. My eyes have been opened to the disgusting corruption within our government and institutions and I am utterly devastated. Every day I feel like I am walking on Mars by myself. It’s horrifying to watch this happen to my daughter. Please keep sharing your experience.
Wow, thank you for writing this. This was very sad. I feel for the trans ID'd patient too. Thank you for sharing, we all need to have compassion. I hope that young man can be free from the delusion some day soon, and accept himself. He probably has people who love him and are worried about him.
“I don't agree with gender ideology, but I also don't hate transgender individuals. It was devastating for my transgender patient to be rejected like this. It was also completely preventable had an acceptance of the scientifically based biological definition of sex been embraced, instead of the "social/cultural" definition of gender.”
Your above paragraph sums up how a lot of us feel, I think. We get told we’re just terfs who ‘hate’ trans people. This simply isn’t true. I don’t hate anyone. I hate the ideology and I wish more people could understand that. I know someone who is trans and I like him very much.
It's straightforward; this “Trans” movement is nothing more than garbage.
It really is. I wonder how long it will take for these facilities to realize the gravity of their errors, and if they'll ever publicly apologize for and denounce their place in this tragic evil.
I retired as a clinical social worker in 2014, before this madness took off. It is incomprehensible to me that my profession has so completely lost it's mind and it's way in service to this completely irrational quasi-religious scarification cult. A cult that valorizes "child sacrifice" no less. Were I still working as a social worker today - no doubt I'd be sanctioned and probably dismissed from the profession for the henious crime of - "rational thought" - and for respecting the material scientific reality of - "sex."
You know, i was thinking more about this situation. And i think it's illustrative of the harms of gender affirming policies, yes, but also of some serious flaws in health care. I noticed a few things that fit with my own experience and that i have often thought were problematic:
1. This didn't happen in this particular case, but too often, I've seen (especially in psych) where the rape victim would have been accommodated, because she was swearing and yelling and waking up the whole unit while the Muslim woman was apparently calm and quieter about it, and also (to my reading) was perhaps using a bit more delicate words and tone with the TIM, therefore perhaps not escalating him so much (plus he was sedated). Far too much, I've seen the loudest and most aggressive patients get their way while the ones who try to be reasonable, or just quietly follow the rules even when it makes them extremely uncomfortable, get "calmed down" or, in psych, to "practice some distress tolerance". This is not only unfair, but it encourages bad behavior while sending the message that you can only get your needs met in the world with force-perhaps not what we want to teach people who are already unstable and dysregulated. So, a huge kudos to you and your colleagues who took steps to ensure EVERYONE had their needs met in this situation, regardless of their level of escalation (and this includes the TIM).
2. You mentioned something interesting here: you said, about the rape victim, that she didn't want to sleep with someone "with the equipment that had harmed her" (or something similar). This, i think, is another great reason that all patients should have access to single rooms. I know of numerous people of both sexes with PTSD. Let's say you have a woman who was viciously abused by her mother. She has no particular trauma surrounding male genitals, or male anything. But she sure does have significant issues when she is startled at night by ANYONE walking, talking, reading, or otherwise making their presence known in the space she is sleeping in. She may also, involuntarily and uncontrollably, yell, scream, swear, and cry, if not punch and kick in bed or while walking around, all while she sleeps or in the instant after being startled awake. Should she be forced to sleep a couple feet from a stranger, regardless of gender? (After all, her female roommate has the same equipment that harmed her, too...) Should another woman be forced to share a bedroom with this one, who will disrupt the sleep of any roommate and possibly even strike out at them physically, and who can't be "disciplined" or "motivated"to stop because she has no control over this behavior? Should any patient be forced to share a room with someone who has cognitive disabilities and may unknowingly and without ill intent do inappropriate or uncomfortable things?
The problem with deciding that some trauma is reason enough for "special"accommodations (meaning, to violate policy), and other trauma isn't, is that you encourage EVERYONE to exaggerate, alter, or falsify the details of their own life experience, and then reward them for doing so. I've seen situations similar to this turn into a real mess as patients see how someone else got a coveted single room (and gossip doesn't spread faster anywhere than in a psych unit!) and suddenly you have an entire unit of "traumatized rape victims" or "severe sleepwalkers" who will "decompensate" if placed in a double. This is unfair to those who truly have PTSD, as it will make people more skeptical of them and less accommodating over time. It's also unfair to those who choose not to lie, and grit their teeth to "follow the rules".
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing you at all; I'm not. I'm criticizing the way the system tends to ignore patient emotional needs-especially among psych patients and substance users-unless they go completely apeshit. How about we just meet everyone's needs? There is ample evidence to show that roommates are detrimental to a majority of both medical and psychiatric patients. I know this would require significant investment and infrastructure overhaul, but even some initial steps in the right direction would be welcome. Instead, i see consistent efforts by admin to get people to tolerate suboptimal (at least) conditions, then quickly do whatever it takes to shut them up when a few eventually blow their top. And it's incredibly frustrating for staffers, with no real power to change policy, who actually care about their patients AND who are left holding the bag when things go sideways in the middle of the night.
3. As I've mentioned in other comments, you said something else that stuck out, along the lines of "[nurses] are just there to medicate and keep people from escalating". This is too true not just of nurses but of the entire inpatient psych system-supposedly the "highest level of care". You mentioned you wondered if the man had had grief counseling, or when he began dressing the way he did. But due to the very short lengths of stay today, such things are considered strictly outpatient issues. Which does make sense given where we are, because it's not ideal for a patient to have staff they've known for an hour trying to explore all their psychological history and problems. And it's probably impossible for even the most skilled and dedicated therapist to really get a solid impression of the real problems in less than a week.
But, only the sickest, highest risk, most vulnerable patients are admitted at all now unless they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for a private, no insurance facility. These patients should be getting the best and most intensive care. "Higher level of care"should mean just that. Instead, it seems to be the opposite: most inpatients get minimal to no individual therapy, medication is almost always the center of every inpatient plan of care, and they don't stay long enough to even evaluate if the med changes are really effective or if they are viable long term. The real work gets relagated to the outpatient team. And a lucky few patients do have a great outpatient team who does brilliantly with this. The majority, though, (including most with the most difficult social situations and highest needs) have a patchwork of ever-changing, too-busy clinicians who range from disinterested to incompetent to competent-but-too-strapped-for-time-to-be-really-effective.
Don't get me wrong, gender affirmation policy needs to change. But it's actually just one of numerous changes that are needed if we are ever going to have a system that actually helps more people than it traumatizes, for the long term instead of placing cheap bandaids.
Oh, and ps: that feeling you got when you saw that your second admission was a Muslim woman? And the only available bed was with a biological male? "%&:$, this is just NOT gonna be a good night"? I know it well. And i sympathize.
This is really well-written, and from one health care worker to another, i have observed many of the same things: the older medical doctors playing along but not really giving a fig either way. The staff who do their best to manage ridiculous policies (and that goes far, far beyond just gender stuff) without losing their jobs or anyone getting hurt-too much, anyway.
But this was my favorite: "If a bad policy has any hope of being overturned, the patient’s natural reaction should guide that process with little to no interference on the part of staff. I may be wrong, but at least a handful of bad experiences must be played out before staff speaks up. That way the challenge comes from experience and not potential bias." I completely agree with you on this. I, personally, don't necessarily think people who advocate against policies like this on the basis of philosophy or sociopolitical views get very far most of the time, and often, what ends up happening is that due to their initial strong ideologocally-based response (even if it's correct), EVERYONE who voices any problem with that policy will be painted with the same "intolerant-biased" brush. I,too, have found it far more productive to allow situations to play out and THEN go to the administration with concrete examples of patient response. It can be really hard to let people suffer due to what you know is bad policy, but usually there really isn't any other option if you want to keep your job (and getting fired isn't going to help all the patients to come). No matter what you say, without actual patient incidents or complaints, admin is unlikely to change course.
My personal feeling is that this sort of tension is a big part of the burnout and moral injury along nurses but also most other professionals and staff in the health care system. It is SO hard to have no choice but to follow policy you know is harmful, and to watch patients suffer because of it-and then to be the one left cleaning up the mess at 3am to boot.
Thank you for caring so much about all your patients.
The utter stupidity of the regulations is breathtaking. Totally predictable responses to an intolerable situation from damaged patients, but what happens when the regulations are changed to FORCE their acquiescence? Are they going to be punished for their refusal? I guarantee that this scenario will occur somewhere soon, if not on this unit, then another.
I whole heartedly agree with this article. As an old nurse, I could never return to the profession with the gender conformity that is needed today. I am too set in my ways. As a mother of a daughter who believes she is male, I have seen the devastating effects on her beautiful body that will never be able to be changed. This is an unholy state of being we are in today being forced to accept a lie about false gender.
I am so sorry. My daughter is going to devastate her body and it healthy functioning. I know it’s coming.
You didn't have a "transgender patient." No one is "transgender" and this is the entire point. Until this fact is understood the lies will never be removed from power. People just keep spreading the lies by using the made-up words and language that contain the lies. Using the language spreads and further entrenches the lies.
This sounds like the makings of a Hollywood movie. If you have not read the book Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, you should consider it. She recounts her tale (in a slim volume) of time spent in a psyche ward where she was one of the saner bulimics (or anorexics- I cannot remember). I believe it was made into a movie but cannot say I saw it. It baffles the mind how the psyche industry is used to push horrific agendas. Thank you for seeing the truth and being kind to the all patients including the trans male who needs compassion more anything else. Please keep reporting! I hope you can change the hearts and minds of your coworkers to stand their ground when confronted with the obvious and not cower to idiotic and harmful 'policy.'
Never has there been such a global brain rot on the loose in society such as this. It is so dark and wvil and twisted that it beggars belief. Honestly makes me believe that satan is real
Thank you
Thank you for sharing this. I have wondered how healthcare workers are dealing with these patients! What a mess- it’s so obviously wrong to compromise the safety of female patients in the name of being kind. These policies need to change. Affirming is essentially lying and when medical professionals do this they are complicit in the harms caused by gender medicine. Biology is real and we need to get back to reality.
Thank you for sharing. ❤️ I am a female and the only time I ever needed hospitalization for depression was after being given a Depo Provera shot for “birth control”. I was 115 lb, 5’6’ and 19 years old. The injection was the same whether you weighed 300 lb or was a skinny little thing. Depo Provera is the SAME drug gender affirming care uses as a puberty blocker. Within a couple weeks of the injection I became very depressed and within a month I was suicidal. Mind you, I had never felt like this before in my life. It was 100% this awful drug. It took almost a whole year to feel like myself again and for the the drug to be out of my body. There absolutely needs to be more research into the hormone therapy + depression and suicide connection. I can tell you first hand that those drugs are powerful, dangerous and absolutely caused my depression. I’ve never had an issue since.
Thanks for sharing. You are right. These hormone altering drugs are dangerous