Woman treated with hormone blockers to reassign gender as a teenager takes NHS to court- I should have been told to wait.
Keira Bell said the care she received for gender dysphoria, a condition where a person experiences distress due to a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity, steered her towards medical treatment.
Ms Bell, who used to identify as a boy, was 15 when she went to the Tavistock Centre in London. She said after "roughly three sessions" she started receiving hormone blockers.
Eight years later, and after undergoing surgery, Ms Bell is de-transitioning to return to a woman
"I should have been told to wait and not affirmed in my gender identity I was claiming to have and given intensive therapy basically to make sure that I was on the right track for things and investigate the feelings I was having to figure out how I got to that stage."
Ms Bell said she felt "trapped and alone", and the Tavistock Centre should have taken into account the "confusion" teenagers experience before offering her treatment.
Ms Bell's legal team argue the centre's approach was unlawful because children could not give informed consent for this kind of treatment and the potential risks of treatment were not adequately explained.
The landmark cases could change the way childhood gender dysphoria is treated on the NHS.
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