Speaking with patients, employees, local health-care providers, and parents, the
Times investigation corroborated many of Reed’s central allegations, most notably that a substantial number of adolescent patients were prescribed testosterone treatments before their underlying mental-health issues were addressed. Moreover, the St. Louis clinic exhibited a categoric lack of record-keeping and patient tracking.
As “demand rose, more patients arrived with complex mental health issues. The clinic’s staff often grappled with how best to help, documents show, bringing into sharp relief a tension in the field over whether some children’s gender distress is the root cause of their mental health problems, or possibly a transient consequence of them,” the
Times noted.
“
With its psychologists overbooked, the clinic relied on external therapists, some with little experience in gender issues, to evaluate the young patients’ readiness for hormonal medications. Doctors prescribed hormones to patients who had obtained such approvals, even adolescents whose medical histories raised red flags. Some of these patients later stopped identifying as transgender, and received little to no support from the clinic after doing so.”
