A call to action from NSUN, co-signed by: Centre for Mental Health, The McPin Foundation, Mental Health First Aid England®, Rethink Mental Illness, Mental Health UK, Student Minds, and Mind.
NSUN is calling on mental health charities to do more to protect trans rights.
Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility, which is an important opportunity to celebrate trans history and defend trans rights in the here and now.
Trans rights are under attack. Increasingly, this is being done in the name of mental healthcare – either positioning transness as a mental health problem, or claiming that mental healthcare should be seen as a viable alternative to life-saving, gender-affirming care.
At NSUN, we commit to:
- Rejecting the co-option of mental health for transphobic ends; we refuse to be complicit
- Prioritising support for work that is trans-led and/or focusses on issues relating to trans lives
- Advocating for trans rights, including but not limited to the right to healthcare
- Challenging barriers faced by trans people in accessing mental healthcare
What have trans rights got to do with mental health?
Trans rights are increasingly being rolled back in the name of mental health. This is happening in multiple ways, including attempts to frame mental healthcare as a viable or appropriate alternative to gender-affirming medical care. This argument was a central theme of the heavily critiqued Cass Review and has cut across resultant policy changes (such as the indefinite ban on puberty blockers). While all trans people deserve access to appropriate psychological therapies, these should never be used as a way of delaying or preventing life-saving medical care.
We as the mental health sector have a responsibility to call out this logic, rejecting the ways transness is constructed as a mental health problem and resisting psychological therapies being used as a new form of conversion therapy.
Much work has been done in recent years to highlight the prevalence of mental ill-health and barriers to treatment faced by trans people. This work is vital and necessary. However, not enough is being done to counteract the myth that being trans is a mental health problem or something to be fixed by mental health care. If we do not take clear public policy positions on trans rights, we risk our work being co-opted to further undermine the rights of trans people and their access to healthcare.
Our role
We know that the mental health system is neither appropriate nor equipped to act as an alternative to gender-affirming care. We know that any rollback of rights creates and produces distress, pushing more and more people toward crisis; something our already-strained mental health system cannot deal with. We have a responsibility to intervene.
We know that any attempt to position transness as a mental health problem – and the use of the mental health system to delay/sidestep gender-affirming medical care – is simply conversion therapy by another name. We commit to highlighting and challenging this logic.
Our task does not include simply working toward safer mental healthcare. It also includes challenging the systems and structures that cause and exacerbate suffering in the first place. The attack on trans rights has already led to increased gender-policing, state interference with individual autonomy, and decreased access to healthcare. These are issues that affect us all, regardless of whether we are trans.
There is brilliant work being led by trans people to fight for greater access to necessary care, resist the rollback of hard-won rights and ensure that no one faces the violence of conversion therapy. But trans people and trans-led organisations should not be alone in this fight.
While there is work being done in the mental health sector to support trans people, we can, must, and will do more.
This statement is co-signed by the following mental health charities:
- Centre for Mental Health
- The McPin Foundation
- Mental Health First Aid England®
- Rethink Mental Illness
- Mental Health UK
- Student Minds
- Mind
Please contact courtney.buckler@nsun.org.uk with any enquiries.