A therapist in Washington state said she quit her job because she could no longer go along with her employer's insistence on helping her young patients change genders, regardless of their diagnoses.
Tamara Pietzke worked as a clinical social worker with MultiCare, one of the largest hospital systems in the state. She claimed the hospital started aggressively pushing "gender-affirming" care over the past year and their pediatric gender clinic had received a $100,000 donation in May of 2022 "to study health care disparities" in transgender youth.
"I was getting the message from my supervisors that when a young person I was seeing expressed discomfort with their gender—the diagnostic term is gender dysphoria—I should throw out all my training. No matter the patient’s history or other mental health conditions that could be complicating the situation, I was simply to affirm that the patient was transgender, and even approve the start of a medical transition," she wrote in a new op-ed for The Free Press.
"I believe this rise of "affirmative care" for young people with gender dysphoria challenges the very fundamentals of what therapy is supposed to provide," Pietzke argued.
Pietzke shared how she was pressured to go along with the "gender-affirming care" model with three of her biological female, teenage patients even though each patient had several other complicated histories and diagnoses beyond gender dysphoria, such as autism and sexual abuse.
One 13-year-old patient who had depression, PTSD, anxiety, intermittent explosive disorder, and autism, was suicidal and had been sexually assaulted. The patient grew up with a bipolar mother in an abusive household where she only watched horror and violent pornography.
Pietzke said she was concerned after the patient's guardian asked her to prescribe cross-sex hormones after just a few visits.
"I was scared for this patient. She had so many overlapping problems that needed addressing it seemed like malpractice to abruptly begin her on a medical gender transition that could quickly produce permanent changes," she wrote. But after raising her concerns with her supervisor, Pietzke was told that her patient's history of trauma had no bearing on her gender dysphoria. She was scolded about causing potential harm to her patient's mental health and kicked off the teen's team.
The hospital, she surmised, thought she "posed a greater risk" to her client "than giving her a life-altering procedure with no proven long-term benefit."
Another one of her young patients with a complicated mental health history repeatedly changed her gender identity before settling on "xenogender" and telling Pietzke that she identified as a "wounded male dog."
"She said she felt she didn’t have all of the right appendages, and that she wanted to start wearing ears and a tail to truly feel like herself. I was stunned. All I could do was silently nod along," Pietzke recalled.
The therapist said she was pressured again by colleagues to affirm the patient's gender identity and told that there was nothing "to fix."
"If someone told me they use a litterbox instead of a toilet and they were happy with it and it’s part of their life that brings them fulfillment, then great!" her colleague wrote in an e-mail. "I might think it’s weird, but then again, not my life."
Hormonal treatments did not help another one of her former patients. The teen had multiple diagnoses, including autism, and was prescribed testosterone treatments at the behest of her mother, despite the drug having potential dangerous side effects for the teen's diabetes.
"The patient’s mother, who has another transgender child, strongly encouraged it. This patient now has a wispy mustache and a deepened voice, but does not pass as male," the therapist said, describing how the patient now, six years later, rarely leaves the house and spends most days in bed playing video games. "It turns out that testosterone, which will be prescribed for life, did not relieve the patient’s other mental illnesses," she wrote.
In the months before quitting her job, the therapist said she was forced to undergo training on "gender-affirming care" at MultiCare. But after she brought up a pediatrics study purporting to show that the vast majority of female patients diagnosed with gender dysphoria had prior mental health issues, Pietzke said she was berated by her colleagues and told she was violating the Hippocratic Oath.
The therapist said she was compelled to expose the hospital system's treatment methods because she fears her industry is "causing irreversible damage" to these young patients.
"I am speaking out because nothing will change unless people like me—who know the risks of medicalizing troubled young people—blow the whistle. I am desperate to help my patients. And I believe, if I don’t speak out, I will have betrayed them."
MultiCare did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
