McHugh points to the reality that because sex change is physically impossible, it frequently does not provide the long-term wholeness and happiness that people seek. Our brains and senses are designed to bring us into contact with reality, connecting us with the outside world and with the reality of ourselves. Paul McHugh, the university distinguished service professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explains :.
Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people โextending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgenderedโdocuments their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers. It found that most research was poorly designed, which skewed the results in favor of physically changing sex.
There was no evaluation of whether other treatments, such as long-term counseling, might help transsexuals, or whether their gender confusion might lessen over time.
Hyde said the high drop-out rate could reflect high levels of dissatisfaction or even suicide among post-operative transsexuals. The facility conducted its review back in , so perhaps things have changed in the past decade?
Not so. In , a new review of the scientific literature was done by Hayes, Inc. Hayes found that the evidence on long-term results of sex reassignment was too sparse to support meaningful conclusions and gave these studies its lowest rating for quality:. Statistically significant improvements have not been consistently demonstrated by multiple studies for most outcomes.
