Nursing

Linguistics

Philosophy

Health care

Psychoanalysis

Social psychology

Gatekeeping

Informed consent

Prejudice (legal term)

Alternative medicine

Psychology

Transgender

Political science

Psychotherapist

Referral

Foregrounding

Mental health

Medicine

Pathology

Journal of Medical Ethics

Although informed consent models for prescribing hormone replacement therapy are becoming increasingly prevalent, many physicians continue to require an assessment and referral letter from a mental health professional prior to prescription. Drawing on personal and communal experience, the author argues that assessment and referral requirements are dehumanising and unethical, foregrounding the ways in which these requirements evidence a mistrust of trans people, suppress the diversity of their experiences and sustain an unjustified double standard in contrast to other forms of clinical care. Physicians should abandon this unethical requirement in favour of an informed consent approach to transgender care.

Gatekeeping hormone replacement therapy for transgender patients is dehumanising