A physician describes an “affirmation technique” to treating child gender dysphoria as neither scientific nor effective.
Dr. Kristopher Kaliebe, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of South Florida, started medical school in 1995, completed his final fellowship in 2005, and has since been engaged in both training and practicing medicine.
Due to 2016,” I saw zero people expressing female dysphoria”, he told The College Fix in a new interview.
However, he said there are times when the three or four USF people he is supervising might have three people with gender dysphoria between them at the child psychology office.
Kaliebe has become a well-known critique of gender affirming care and the destruction of open discussion about this and other aspects of sex ideology. She is raising the alarm about the trend.
” I’m displeased in this particular topic we have n’t been able to talk openly and freely”, he said.
Kaliebe is n’t staying silent. He addressed his concerns at the Heterodox Academy’s June event and wrote about them on Substack.
” No one has a monopoly on the facts. … We all know more and learn better when we can have open, fair, completely exchange”, he said in a July phone interview with The College Fix.
” I think what has been most disturbing]is ] that this is a topic that ]has ] become highly moralized and stigmatized. We did n’t experience the rigorous back-and-forth that is expected to occur in medicine.
According to Kaliebe, the preference for advocacy and dogma over the pursuit of truth in matters relating to gender dysphoria may hinder the advancement of science and possibly hurt patients in general.
A pair of reports by Kaliebe can be found among a number of recently released court documents, including those challenging a 2022 Alabama laws that placed significant limitations on the pharmacological and surgical treatment of minors with gender dysphoria in that state.
In one of the information, Kaliebe details how HHS and WPATH function to silence critics of gender affirming care while revealing that” we do not have any evidence to support the safety and efficacy of switching treatments for gender dysphoric children.” She cites inside documents and communications from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Kaliebe responded,” There is no single solution to gender dysphoria,” when asked why it seems to be skyrocketing among children.
” I think we’ve always had some kids who are from the beginning boyish girls and girlish boys and, up until quite recently, no one has ever called them transgender”, Kaliebe said. ” I think a lot of people have sort of adopted that label]even though ] it’s really clinically an inaccurate, misleading label to call a girlish boy or boyish girl transgender, because most of those kids…will grow up to be same-sex attracted adults”.
Additionally, he said,” small kids are very suggestible. So if they’re told that they’re quote-un-quote transgender, you know, they’ll believe it”.
However, according to Kaliebe,” the biggest group of kids… are not early onset kids.” They are children who already have a transgender identity and who are expressing their gender identity.
This sub-population, “never existed before” and seemed to emerge “at the same time that we moved from kind of a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood” which, he said, has been associated with greater depression, anxiety, and body image issues, especially in girls, he said.
Kaliebe said he was curious about the “affirmation approach” as well as the promotion and acceptance of it because of his long-standing professional interest in childhood sex and gender issues and what he perceived as his obligations as a child psychiatrist.
He said the “affirmation approach” was initially strange because it was” so different than anything else we do in child psychiatry,” as was the use of medical interventions as the first option for treating this novel phenomenon.
Kaliebe stated that he was initially skeptical of this approach and that he is still steadfast in his doubts.
When a psychiatrist sees a child experiencing gender dysphoria, he said,” I think the first thing that]they ] would want to do is do a well-rounded psychiatric evaluation and look for what other comorbidities, meaning other mental health problems, are there”, as well as potentially explore whether the development of the condition coincided with some other event in the child’s life.
The psychiatrist would then treat the “more traditional mental health concerns like depression or anxiety” with cognitive therapy, medication, or other traditional approaches, he said.
More medicalized approaches, he said, seem to lack an evidence base.
However, Kaliebe noted, many professional medical organizations have gone in a different direction, deferring to ideology over science.
According to Kaliebe, the motivation behind this happening and why so many practitioners appear to be supporting it can be more influenced by leadership and the composition of expert committees than by membership.
These organizations, he said, each have a gender committee, often comprised of self-appointed experts. These self-selected individuals, Kaliebe added, tend to be the people who write the guidelines on which many practicing physicians rely.
Yet, “unfortunately in this case … the gender experts got together and took us to a position which, you know, neither was science-based nor was good clinical care”, he said.
” ]Now ] it’s really hard for]medical organizations ] to backpedal and admit they’ve made a mistake and there’s a lot of implications for them admitting they’ve made mistakes so they’re reluctant to do so”, he said.
Instead, Kaliebe said, these organizations are “doubling down” and have become quick” to demonize and malign those who have a different viewpoint” as “anti-trans” or “dismiss]them ] as promoting conversion therapy”.
He claimed that those who “weren more concerned with safeguarding” were labeled as “bad people” and given unfair treatment.
MORE: Oregon High School track coach fired for recommending an “open” transgender division in a lawsuit against district
IMAGE: University of South Florida
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