British government report says trans suicide claims overblown

A United Kingdom government adviser on Friday said statistics do not indicate that there had been a large spike in suicides among young people who identified as transgender after a 2020 decision by UK’s National Health Service restricting access to puberty blockers for those under 16. The UK’s health secretary asked Professor Louis Appleby to review allegations that suicide rates among current and former patients of the so-called gender services department at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust had risen. Appleby said he found no statistical evidence indicating teenagers identifying as members of the opposite sex were committing suicide at higher rates or were at greater risk of suicide than before the puberty blocker restrictions.

What specifically were the claims made about transgender suicides? The Good Law Project, a political nonprofit in the UK, alleged that suicides among youth identifying as transgender skyrocketed in recent years. The group attributed this claim to the UK National Health Service’s decision to keep minors from obtaining puberty blockers, despite a 2021 Court of Appeal ruling overturning that decision.

In the seven years before the court’s decision, only one transgender teenager died, the Good Law Project said. But in the three years since, the group said 16 transgender teens had died. Specifically, a medical facility in the town of Tavistock in England had seen a rise in deaths among some of its teenage patients who suffered from gender dysphoria. Two individuals at the facility told the Good Law Project that the British government was covering up data about suspicious deaths of individuals with gender dysphoria. The Good Law Project described the individuals as whistleblowers.

What were the problems with this data, specifically? The Good Law Project’s claims did not meet the most basic standards of statistical evidence, Appleby explained. Many of the deaths reported by the Tavistock facility were not proven to be suicides. Furthermore, the number of deaths authorities had ruled as suicides was so small that observers could not establish a single reliable cause for them. Specifically, Appleby said he reviewed the Tavistock data for every year between the 2018-19 term and the 2023-24 term. He said the data showed three suicides among patients under 18 before the restrictions were put in place, and three after. Additionally, the Good Law Project’s numbers had never been independently verified and had not been reviewed by anyone with an expertise in suicide.

Has Good Law Project responded? Good Law Project Director Jo Maugham on Friday said that he worked to corroborate the data from the Tavistock facility and added that he planned to speak with a third whistleblower who echoed his organization’s claims. But he did note that the Tavistock facility would acknowledge deaths as probable and suspected suicides while the UK’s National Child Mortality Database—which Appleby’s research relied upon—only acknowledged deaths as suicides when a coroner declared that to be the cause of death.

Dig deeper: Read Nathanael Blake’s column in WORLD Opinions about how pro-transgender activists have failed to provide concrete evidence of the risk of increased suicide rates among young people with gender dysphoria.