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Spotted this on the Guardian's web site this morning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/22/transgend...
Robi
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Comments
Charing Cross / Clarke - SS,DP
Hi, Robi,
Thank you for the referral to the Guardian feature. Here in Canada I think we have an almost parallel history and relationship with the (in)famous Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. For the longest time they were the nation's absolute gatekeepers, the final authorities on all things transgender. While there is some progress, they still wield far too much authority.
Until very recently, and for many, many years, anyone in Canada wanting reassignment surgery - and in many instances even hormone therapy - were required to see and be approved by the boffins at the Clarke in Toronto, Ontario. Everyone wanted to be referred to them, because they were the source. And everyone feared them, because they were the ones who could ruin your life with a short form letter and little explanation.
I know that many people who cannot cope with the results or stresses apply for gender reassignment, but I know from experience that the Clarke had no more basis to pass or fail many of their applicants than any local mental health professional.
There seemed to be an arbitrariness to their decisions that delayed or stopped many a transgendered person's transition, added tremendous and unnecessary costs, and ruined many lives. I sailed through their bizarre screening process (even refusing to undergo several of their tests), while friends were sent home to spend years (and even decades) to wait, spend money on counselors, suffer along without hormone prescriptions, and otherwise live parts of their lives in lessened conditions... only to miraculously be approved for surgery by the Clarke experts years later,based on- well, often based on what seemed to be nothing more concrete than a more sympathetic interviewer at the Clarke.
I also know people who were approved by the Clarke based on a couple of days' interviews and falsified personal histories that directly contradicted what their long-term counselors knew, and who were devastated by the results of their surgeries.
Gatekeepers suck.
Michelle
Sounds Typical NHS Muddle to Me
Having now read the writer in the Guardian's article on the infamous Charing x clinic, I feel it was about what I would expect. I have lived for 30 years in various other, mostly mainland European countries, and experienced the various health services of most of them, although as a pharmaceutical research liason person more than as a patient. The NHS is, in my personal experience, a very poorly organised and managed service, where many of the medics are exceedingly arrogant and behave as though patients are something of an irritating interuption rather than the central part of their jobs. Their knowledge of diagnostic tests available, and of the pharmacology of the medicines they prescribe is abysmal. I rate the UK NHS as sligthtly better than the health care in Romania and Bulgaria and well below that of France, both of the Germanies before unification, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Hungary. Knowing quite a lot about the workings and side effects of most medicines I tend to medicate myself, just telling a friend who is a medic in Germany what i am doing, as a second opinion. Fortunately i am seldom sick so seldom need anything.
I find it appalling that someone has to wait for 7 months for an appointment. That people need a referral from a GP who knows less than nothing about the specialty, to get to see an expert. In mainland Europe you can go direct to a specialist, there are many of them with practices outside hospitals. And I have seen too many friends in the UK messed about by the chaos of appointment systems with appointments being delayed, or when the patient turns up but the particular doctor is not there that day, and another appointment is given instead. When someone has a carcinoma, these delays at every step along the way are often fatal. It really ought to be much better than this.
Well, that is my rsnt over. Anyone is welcome to disagree and try to produce evidence that it is better than I think. May be there are a few islands of excellence still?
Thanks for putting this link up, Robyn. Good to see the Guardian publishing this kind of thing. In my time it was never talked about.
Bless,
Briar
Briar