Imagine if to get a flu jab, anti-depressants or a broken leg fixed you had to have 4 or 5 separate Dr appointments and at least 2 specialists confirm your diagnosis and give you a signature before you could get your prescription or any treatment.

Wouldn’t that be a waste of resources?

Waiting times would soar, costs to the NHS would rise and patients’ physical and mental health would suffer.

Decades ago being transsexual (now more commonly referred to as transgender) was very much considered a mental health issue, and required several evaluations by psychiatrists. There were many hoops to jump through because the medical profession needed to make absolutely sure that the patient was indeed transsexual before they were allowed to have their ‘sex change’. A term now very outdated and considered derogatory. Many faced being sectioned just for thinking they might be in the ‘wrong body’. After all who in their right mind would want to change gender?

These days things have moved forward. Well they have a little, but I very much feel the medical profession are strongly dragging their heals back to those times. Patients still require several assessments and signatures from trained professionals to get the go ahead for every single step of treatment and in the UK the NHS typically require more steps than the latest WPATH guidelines. This means treatment for many can take a decade or more to complete. As you can imagine the process of gender transition is all-consuming and patients lose years of their life to this process, years that could have been spent