UPDATE 26

11 April 2026

Dear Supporter,

Welcome to the latest Update from Save Mental Health. This month we have another terrific piece from Lucy Beney, expanding on the thoughts and ideas she discussed in her British Thought Leaders interview, last month, about the social factors making us sick. 

We will also be focusing this month on three topical stories:

•   Landmark Finnish study finds psychiatric needs do not subside after medical gender reassignment

• Is Louis Theroux asking the wrong questions about the “Manosphere”?

• The ‘organised innocence’ of our public services

Inside or Out? The Social Factors Making Us Sick

In her latest article, Lucy Beney explores in more detail the concerns she raised in her excellent British Thought Leaders interview. This interview was strongly recommended by Katharine Birbalsingh, Headmistress of Michaela School, who described it as a “must watch” and Lucy herself as “brilliant”.  The concerns Lucy explores in her current article relate to the social factors she believes are “making us sick” and having a detrimental effect on children’s well-being and their ability to thrive. Don’t miss this one!

An important Finnish study was published this week in Acta Paediatrica. The aims of the study, by Ruuska and colleagues, was “to examine the prevalence of severe psychiatric morbidity among gender-referred adolescents, focusing on gender differences and outcomes related to medical gender reassignment”. Researchers examined outcomes for 2,083 patients referred to gender clinics in Finland between 1996 and 2019 and compared them with a large and carefully selected control group. They found that the girls and young women given testosterone and boys and young men given oestrogen suffered significant increases in distress after starting ‘gender affirming’ treatment. The researchers concluded that: ‘Psychiatric needs do not subside after medical gender reassignment’.

Dr Dionne Joseph, a Chartered Clinical Psychologist talking to Josh Howie about these findings on GB News’ Free Speech Nation, said: “This is the evidence that we have needed for a long time” and stated that “Gender affirming care is a disaster”.  Dr Joseph, otherwise known as ‘Dr P’ on X, has long been a vocal critic of so-called ‘gender affirming care’.

In his Substack, Gender Clinic News, Bernard Lane explains that “Thanks to Finland’s comprehensive healthcare register, the study does not suffer from the uncertainty of patients lost to follow-up. And it benefits from comparison with 16,643 matched controls in the general population.”  He points out that “Gender dysphoria as a field has been plagued by poorly designed studies with problems such as small or unrepresentative samples, short-term follow-up, missing patient data, and lack of a control or comparison group.” Lane also argues that “The increased psychiatric need of the 2011-2019 cohort is at odds with the minority stress theory, which attributes mental health disorders in trans-identifying patients to a hostile and prejudiced society.” 

Joanna Williams in The Spectator points out that “if we accept the findings of this Finnish study, we need to acknowledge that, rather than gender transition being ‘life saving’ for troubled children, it can do more harm than good”. She, and Jo Bartoschwriting in Spiked, call for the end of medical trials evaluating the efficacy of puberty-blocking hormones in gender questioning children, such as the proposed Pathways Trial. Joanna Williams concludes that “children and distressed young people need psychiatric help, rather than having their delusions affirmed”. Dr Stella O’Malley, commenting on the study’s findings, traces the history of gender affirming care here.

Is Louis Theroux asking the wrong questions about the “Manosphere”?

Louis Theroux’s new Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere has provoked a debate about the effects of social media influencers and podcasters on young boys. This follows on from last year’s controversy about the drama Adolescence which was said to be fuelling a ‘moral panic’ about white working-class boys.   The Manosphere is described by clinical psychologist Antanas Grizas as “a growing collection of online men’s communities (forums, blogs, and video channels), where men gather to discuss their issues”.

In an article for Spiked, Adam Chapman argues that Theroux’s documentary “asks all the wrong questions” and fails to investigate why boys “feel they’re being pushed towards the Andrew Tate types”. Chapman criticises the documentary for providing “a superficial insight into a complex problem” and for failing to “grapple with why figures like Tate have such a hold on young boys”. He asks whether, perhaps the #MeToo movement might have gone too far and questions whether “the long assault on manhood has been a good thing”.

Andrew Doyle, also in Spiked, makes the point that Theroux “acts as though the manosphere itself is more significant than the conditions that gave rise to it” and that Theroux’s approach is “to take for granted that the manosphere is turning young men into sexist beasts”. Doyle wonders if the influence of those ‘influencers’ interviewed “is not so profound as Theroux assumes” and whether documentaries like this “risk overestimating the influence of those who peddle this nonsense”. 

In contrast, Clinical Psychologist Antanas Grizas, writing for The Centre for Male Psychology, describes how the “Manosphere” can lead to the development of better mental health services for men. He explains that it is “hard to find a positive or neutral report about the Manosphere”. Acknowledging that “there are radical dangerous ideas being shared in this movement” he says that “we also need to examine the needs of men who are drawn to the Manosphere”.  Grižas argues that “men are driven to the Manosphere because they feel lonely, misunderstood and there is a lack of male-friendly services elsewhere”. This leads them to talk in groups and with peers rather than seek therapy. The Manosphere provides an alternative: “a collection of men’s communities that work as a peer-to-peer support system”.  Grizas points out that research suggests “male-only groups might work better for men than mixed-sex groups.”

Grizas presents the case of an “effective male-friendly mental health service” that originated in Lithuania, which has the highest suicide rate in the EU. His team were inspired by “best suicide prevention practices (ASIST training), recent developments in male psychology and the Manosphere”.  He and his colleagues started the project TRIBES which provides high quality and affordable men’s mental health services. TRIBES are peer-to-peer groups for men, each comprising 6-10 men where they can have discussions, network and take part in men’s mental health and personal development events. Using the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, their participants reported a 30% improvement in their wellbeing during the first two months of the programme. Grižas views TRIBES as a “better alternative to the Manosphere and helps men have a positive impact within their communities”.  

The ‘organised innocence’ of our public services

An article by Professor Ian Acheson in The Daily Telegraph caught our attention this week.  Acheson is a former prison governor and senior official with the Home Office.  In this article, he berates the ‘whole system failure’ that has led to the tragic deaths and injuries of innocent citizens in the UK.  Pointing out that the “First duty of the state is to keep its citizens safe” he cites several cases where the state has failed. These include Valdo Calocane; Axel Rudakubana; the London Bridge terror attack; and the Grenfell disaster.  Acheson points out that despite reviews, enquiries and declarations of ‘lessons learnt’ nothing changes.  He attributes this to “arrogant denial”, describing it as “a self-satisfied belief that existing processes are fine, and that any problems can be managed with another action plan and a few pages of ‘lessons learnt”. He also points to “operational incompetence” and failures in “the basics of risk management, information-sharing and serious incident command”.

Acheson looks in detail at the case of Valdo Calocane, who killed three people – Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar – and seriously injured three more, in June 2023, during a psychotic episode. Acheson refers to findings of the public enquiry which revealed that “decisions about managing Calocane were subverted by considerations of racial bias over harm presented.” He goes on to explain: “In other words, because black men are over-represented in the mental health system, clinicians saw his treatment through that lens rather than one that sought to reduce his actual dangerousness”.  Acheson warns that: “Risk management through race equity is the road to hell paved with good intentions” and explains that Professor Swaran Singh, a consultant psychiatrist had warned of such notions “clouding clinical judgment in research carried out 20 years ago”.  Acheson notes that Professor Singh “was traduced by his own professional body for doing so as a bigot”. The article cites evidence of many failures that occurred in relation to Calocane’s care, claiming that these emerged from “a risk management approach that is hopelessly fractured and ideologically compromised”.  Acheson speaks of the various reviews that have been conducted by the NHS, CQC and Nottingham city council, observing that “Together they added up to a comprehensive audit of why nobody was really responsible.”  He adds: “Sociologists have a phrase for this: ‘organised innocence’.”

The article concludes by reflecting on the fact that “It will be another two years before the families of Calocane’s victims see any conclusion to this sorrowful litany of missed chances” and notes that “Arrogance is not the last chapter of these awful stories. It is always the first”.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Why Traditional Psychotherapy is Failing Today’s Gender-Confused Teens

In a Substack article that really resonated with us here at Save Mental Health, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Joe Burgo, explains how Gender Ideology “has made honest psychotherapy nearly impossible”.  After explaining how this has come about, he gives an example of working with a trans-identified adolescent whose ‘outside world’, friendship group online and preferred ‘facts’ contradict Burgo’s psychotherapeutic approach, and how waiting until the client is fully prepared to hear what the therapist has to say might take years.  As Burgo points out, “Meanwhile the clock is ticking. Parents are desperate because their child is determined to begin taking cross-sex hormones” or “threatening to estrange themselves from their families”. Burgo’s reflections on the difficulties inherent in working with this client group are insightful and, in some ways, oddly reassuring.  I hear his concerns echoed by other therapists facing the same dilemmas.  We now know we are not alone, although it is not a good place to be. Burgo concludes his piece by quoting Jordan Peterson: “Truth is the antidote to suffering” and expressing the hope that if therapists remain steadfast and shine “a steady truthful light into the suffering all around”, the truth will prevail and “this culture-wide pathology” will “finally pass”.

Not Your Victim: How our Obsession with Race Entraps and Divides Us

Current narratives about the West and colonialism are “dangerously wrong” and present a “simplistic worldview”.  This is the view of Marie Kawthar Dauoda, a Morrocan and French academic, expressed in her new book Not Your Victim: How our Obsession with Race Entraps and Divides Us.  Dauoda is a Lecturer in French at Oriel College, Oxford and a member of the Don’t Divide Us Advisory Council.  She argues that the current narrative criticising the West “nurtures the very prejudices it claims to fight by valorizing victimhood above individual or collective agency and by denying ethnic minorities any sense of responsibility’.  Dauoda talked about her book in an excellent interview with Emma Trimble of the New Culture Forum.  It is well worth watching this interview and ordering a copy of the book.