According to a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, transgender persons who have undergone surgery as part of their “gender-affirming care” suffer increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. The study attributed these higher rates as, “partly due to stigma and lack of gender affirmation.” Of course they did. It couldn’t possibly be that the surgeries themselves aren’t helpful.

University of Texas researchers studied 107,583 patients over the age of 18 who suffer gender dysphoria to ascertain the impact on mental health of those who had undergone “gender-affirming surgery.” Some of those in the study had undergone surgery and others had not. What they discovered is that rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and subtance-use disorders were significantly higher in those who had undergone gender-affirming surgery versus those who had not when assessed two years after surgery.

Men who had gender-affirming surgery had depression rates of 25%, compared to a rate of 11.5% for men who did not have surgery. The anxiety rate for men who had surgery was 12.8%, compared to a rate of 2.6% for men who did not have surgery. Women who had gender-affirming surgery had a depression rate of 22.9%, compared to a rate of 14.6% for women who did not have surgery. Women who had surgery had an anxiety rate of 10.5%, compared to a rate of 7.1% for women who did not have surgery. According to reports on the study, “Surgeries that aimed to ‘feminize individuals’ showed ‘particularly high’ rates of depression and substance abuse two years after the procedure.” Researchers wrote that, “Findings suggest the necessity for gender-sensitive mental health support following gender-affirming surgery to address post-surgical psychological risks.”

Yes, of course. What those who suffer from gender dysphoria need is mental health support after they have surgeries that affirm their gender dysphoria. Never would we think that the surgeries themselves might increase the risk of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, or substance abuse. We must continue providing gender dysphorics with “gender-affirming” surgery, and then deal with the increased risk of depression, anxiety, suicideal ideation, and substance abuse. We would never think that maybe, just maybe, providing these surgeries is a bad idea.

An article by the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), published in August 2020, reported on the re-analyzing of the data collected by the  Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Yale School of Public Health for a study that reported decreased mental health issues for transgenders who had undergone gender affirming surgery. The re-analysis of the data led the SEGM to change the conclusion of the study to indicate “no advantage of surgery.” What I find most interesting is that the SEGM wrote in their article, “Despite the higher rate of suicide attempts requiring hospitalization in the ‘surgery’ group, the study design precludes the assertion that ‘gender-affirming’ surgery is harmful” (emphasis added). In other words, in spite of the fact that those who had undergone “gender-affirming” surgery had higher rates of suicide attempts requiring hospitalization, the SEGM refused to consider that the surgeries themselves were the cause. This study had a dataset of 9.7 million Swedes. Sweden is a country very affirming of gender ideology. Yet, they concluded that there was no benefit to gender-affirming surgery, and those who had gender-affirming surgery had more incidents of suicide attempts leading to hospitalization.

A 2024 study published on the Cureus website, entitled “Risk of Suicide and Self-Harm Following Gender-Affirmation Surgery” wrote: “The results of this study indicate that patients who have undergone gender affirmation surgery are associated with significantly higher risks of suicide, self-harm, and PTSD compared to general population control groups in this real-world database.” However, the authors of this study, contrary to their own conclusions, tout the benefits of such surgeries: “Although our study has revealed a statistically significant increase in suicide risk among those who have undergone gender-affirming surgery, it remains vital to recognize and support the positive impacts that these surgical interventions can have on the lives of transgender individuals.” So, we found that those who had undergone gender-affirming surgery had a significant increase in suicide risk but, hey, these surgeries are still beneficial! The study concludes, not that we ought to be reconsidering if these surgeries are worth the increased risk of suicide, but that we ought to provide “comprehensive psychiatric care in the years that follow gender-affirming surgery.” But I thought these surgeries were supposed to decrease the need for comprehensive psychiatric care.

Apparently, the elites in the mental health professions are so committed to the notion that gender-affirming surgeries are helpful for men who are really women and women who are really men coming to terms with themselves that they are willing to ignore the negative results of their own studies to insist on the efficacy of these surgeries on the positive mental health benefits for their patients.

Our society’s elites, including many in the medical profession, have committed themselves to the fiction that males can actually be born into female bodies, and that females can actually be born into male bodies. The commitment is to the proposition, not that these men think they are women, but that they actually are women; not that these women think they are men, but that they actually are men. This is the horror under which we are living. Fiction has become reality. Mental illness has become normal. And if one refuses to play along with make-believe, then he or she is the one regarded as cruel, intolerant, bigoted, and against the science.

St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared for you in advance, that we should live in them” (Eph 2:10). God made us male and female. He did not make us according to our wills, but according to His, fashioning us in our mothers’ wombs to live lives that give Him glory.

This new practice of affirming a person’s mental illness rather than helping them find healing will end in disaster. It is not of God. It is not even human. It is, in fact, a denial of our true humanity, because it replaces who we truly are with who we think we should be. Sound mental health is always grounded in the truth of who we are, not in a make-believe idea of who we want to be. When we were children, we could pretend that we were monsters, elephants, fish in the sea, grown-ups living grown-up lives as cowboys, soldiers, police officers, doctors, nurses, etc. A five-year-old pretending she is a dinosaur, or a ten-year-old pretending he is a Civil War soldier are healthy human developmental tools to our actually coming to terms with who we are. But at some point, the make-believe ends and we realize who we really are, and that is a good and healthy thing. But now we have adults who deny who they are and pretend they are something they are not – men pretending they are women, and women pretending they are men, or men and women pretending they are something other than a man or a woman, even people pretending they are cats, dogs, or what have you. As children, our pretending ended when mom called us in for dinner and we threw ourselves, exhausted from a day of healthy play, into our beds. Now, the pretending does not end until disaster, bodies destroyed by “gender-affirming care.” Perhaps it’s because so few children actually go outside to play in their pretend world these days that so many adults are pretending they are what they are not.

Whatever the reason, it will end in disaster. We will not be able to maintain the make-believe world for these people, or for society as a whole, regardless of how hard we try. The make-believe world will come crashing down, and the victims will not be the few, but the many.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.