Time to Think
Hannah Barnes, Swift Press, £20

“ARE we hurting children?” is the question that lies at the heart of this timely and meticulously researched investigation into the medical scandal at the Tavistock and Portman Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).

The service opened in 1989 to provide talking therapies to young people struggling with their gender identity. Treatment initially consisted of careful and lengthy exploration of the issues and family counselling in a supportive setting. It involved small numbers of patients, mainly boys, who exhibited gender incongruence before puberty. Most of these boys desisted and grew up to be gay. 

By the time of the announcement of the clinic’s closure last year, the number of young people being treated had skyrocketed into the thousands; the vast majority, representing a rise of over 4,000 per cent, were now teenage girls exhibiting extreme distress and complex problems.