Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children

by Hannah Barnes
@hannahsbee

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

‘This is what journalism is for’ – Observer

Time to Think goes behind the headlines to reveal the truth about the NHS’s flagship gender service for children.

The profile of the patients changed too: from largely pre-pubescent boys to mostly adolescent girls, who were often contending with other difficulties.

Why had the patients changed so dramatically? Were all these distressed young people best served by taking puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, which cause irreversible changes to the body? While some young people appeared to thrive after taking the blocker, many seemed to become worse. Was there enough clinical evidence to justify such profound medical interventions in the lives of young people who had so much else to contend with?

This urgent, scrupulous and dramatic book explains how, in the words of some former staff, GIDS has been the site of a serious medical scandal, in which ideological concerns took priority over clinical practice. Award-winning journalist Hannah Barnes has had unprecedented access to thousands of pages of documents, including internal emails and unpublished reports, and well over a hundred hours of personal testimony from GIDS clinicians, former service users and senior Tavistock figures. The result is a disturbing and gripping parable for our times.

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