Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults

Author(s) : Susan Evans, Author(s) : Marcus Evans

Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults

Book Details

  • Publisher : Phoenix Publishing House
  • Published : May 2021
  • Cover : Paperback
  • Pages : 272
  • Category :
    Child and Adolescent Studies
  • Catalogue No : 95310
  • ISBN 13 : 9781912691784
  • ISBN 10 : 9781912691
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In recent years, there has been an explosion in the number of children and young people who diagnose themselves as gender dysphoric, or trans. In the UK, and worldwide, there is a growing tendency to refer them on to ‘specialist gender services’ almost as soon as they express any confusion or distress about their biological sex or gender identity. Due to the rapidly rising numbers and various pressures on the system, patients are increasingly likely to be offered life-altering medication and/or surgical treatments, often with little exploration of their emotional world.

As so little is yet known or understood regarding this increase in gender incongruent patients, it seems precipitous to proceed onto physical treatments before any assessment work is undertaken. Many who present as gender dysphoric have complex needs with comorbid problems such as autism, histories of abuse or trauma, social phobias, depression, eating disorders, and other mental health symptoms. Therefore, all aspects of the individual’s life deserve thorough assessment and therapeutic work.

This book is aimed primarily at clinicians working in the field to provide a model for understanding, assessing, and treating gender dysphoria. The model uses a psychoanalytic framework to help explain disturbed states of mind and how psychic defences can be enlisted unconsciously to avoid overwhelming psychic pain. This offers professionals a way of trying to think with, and offer understanding to, their trans identifying clients. Clinical examples are given to illustrate these processes and promote the understanding of transgender children, adolescents, and young people and their internal worlds, their thinking, and their interpersonal relationships. As well as clinical exploration and understanding, the book includes an overview of the current political, social, and clinical environments which have all impacted on the clinical care of trans identifying individuals.

As well as professional and trainee clinicians, this book might also prove useful to parents, other professionals, and possibly the gender dysphoric person too.

About the Author(s)

Susan Hickman Evans is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained at the former Lincoln Centre for Psychotherapy. Retired after nearly 40 years in the NHS, she now has a private practice in South East London. She is a member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation, the London Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Service, and is registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council (BCP). She trained as a State Registered Nurse in 1977, then trained as an RMN and worked within many mental health specialist services including addictions, eating disorders, and in a specialist mother and baby service, which won the Sir Graham Day Award for NHS service development (1999).

As a psychotherapist she worked for 12 years at the Tavistock and Portman NHSFT in the Adult Department and also in the Gender Identity Development Service for Children. She was responsible as Course Organiser for the development and delivery as senior clinical lecturer of several training programmes at the Tavistock and a Senior Fellow at University of East London.

Marcus Evans is a consultant adult psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust with thirty-five years experience in mental health as a practitioner, lecturer and manager. He qualified as a psychiatric nurse in 1983 and went on to occupy nursing posts as charge nurse of St. Giles Day Hospital, clinical nurse specialist in liaison psychiatry and para-suicide in Kings College Hospital A&E, and clinical nurse specialist in psychotherapy at the Bethlem and Maudsley hospitals. After qualifying as a psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, he took up a post as head of the nursing discipline with a brief to develop the nursing discipline within the Trust. He held the post of Head of Nursing and consultant Adult psychotherapist until taking on the post of Associate Clinical Director of the adult and adolescent departments between 2011 and 2015. Marcus has supervised designed developed and taught outreach courses for front line mental health staff in various settings for the last twenty-five years in many mental health trusts including Camden and Islington, the Bethlem and Maudsley, and Broadmoor. He was also one of the founding members of the Fitzjohns Service for the treatment of patients with severe and enduring mental health conditions and/or personality disorder in the adult department and since stepping down as the associate clinical director he has started working as a consultant adult psychotherapist in the Portman clinic. His passion is the application of psychoanalytic ideas to the treatment and care of patients in mental health settings.

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