James Kirkup at the Spectator dissects that reckless BBC article, starting by quoting the Samaritans’ advice on how to report on suicide:
Steer clear of presenting suicidal behaviour as an understandable response to a crisis or adversity. This can contribute to unhelpful and risky normalising of suicide as an appropriate response to distress.’
And:
‘Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life.’
Yet the BBC quoted people doing exactly those things.
Then he points out that the Tavistock itself says suicidality in its clients is the same as that of other “young people referred to child and adolescent mental health services.” Then he points out that the Tavistock itself has found no improvement “in mood or psychological wellbeing using standardised psychological measures.”
Yet the BBC article treated the ruling as a dire emergency for the Tavistock’s clients. That doesn’t add up.
In summary, the country’s leading suicide prevention charity tells journalists not to ‘normalise’ suicide, especially among young people, by presenting it as an understandable or inevitable response to crisis. The country’s leading medical authority on transgender young people says they are not at unusual risk of suicide, and called suggestions to the contrary unhelpful. The same clinic’s evidence shows that the use of puberty blocking medication does not improve the mental health of trans children.
So about that BBC article –
The third paragraph of the story says this:
‘Doctors and parents have told the BBC the ruling could cause distressed trans teens to self-harm or even take their own lives.’
Doctors, eh? That’s quite a thing to report. If ‘doctors’ are indeed saying that a court ruling could ’cause’ children to commit suicide, that’s surely something that should be reported, in the public interest. So who are these doctors?
The first is the anonymous clinician. The second is Adrian Harrop, who is quoted saying
‘It makes me terribly worried that there is now nothing there for those children, and nothing that can be done to help them. Parents are being left at a point where they’re having to struggle to cope with these children who are in a real state of distress and anxiety. Sadly, there is a very real risk of seeing more suicides.’
Dr Harrop is a GP in Liverpool. He has a record of expressing strong opinions on transgender issues via social media. What he does not have is a history of publishing peer-reviewed medical research on mental health and self-harm among trans children. Nor has he worked as a clinician at a clinic such as GIDS. Yet the BBC deems his speculation about child suicide more worthy of reporting than the views of experts such as Polly Carmichael, head of the GIDS and a world-recognised authority in the care of trans children.
And that’s putting it mildly. Harrop has more than a record of expressing strong opinions on transgender issues via social media, he also has a record of shouting at and bullying and “reporting” feminist women who dispute his claims. He has a record of doing that energetically and repeatedly and downright obsessively; he’s a very nasty piece of work. But the BBC (in the person of Ben Hunte) saw fit to quote him rather than people with professional understanding of the subject.
Then the BBC cites a letter from “GenderGP” which complains about the ruling and does the obligatory warning of “self-harm and suicide.”
What the BBC does not report about GenderGP is that it is based outside the UK, since the two doctors who founded it were both suspended by the General Medical Council for breaking UK medical rules.
Here, I offer another summary: the BBC reported that ‘doctors’ say a court ruling halting the use of puberty blockers could ’cause’ children to commit suicide, on the basis of unevidenced assertions from a non-specialist medic and disgraced doctors who make money selling such drugs. It did so without reporting the views of actual experts that such narratives about suicide are misleading and potentially harmful.
And this isn’t random people burbling on Twitter or Redditt, it’s the BBC. The call is coming from inside the house.
He too then notes the failure of the BBC to mention the suicide claims it removed from the article.
In other words, the BBC reported yesterday that a court ruling could cause young people to commit suicide. Today it no longer says that. Such a correction is welcome, of course, but I can’t help thinking that such a fundamental change in the premise of the article warrants at least a clear public acknowledgment, if not outright deletion.
Especially since the current version of the article still has Harrop and “Gender GP” making the suicide threat.
