Pentagon doctor criticized for claiming gender treatment might cure psychosis in kids despite data

A doctor who works for the Pentagon is drawing ire after he claimed that giving gender treatment drugs and surgeries to minors can help mental health issues, such as schizophrenia, go away.

Dr. David Klein, who works at the David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base, was commenting about a study that showed no significant mental health benefits from the administration of gender medical treatment, Fox News reports.

Indeed, the study found that the use of drugs to combat mental health issues increased after treatment.

“Among 963 [transgender] youth using gender-affirming pharmaceuticals, mental healthcare did not significantly change and psychotropic medications increased following gender-affirming pharmaceutical initiation,” the study says.

Ironically, Klein was a listed author on the study.

Perhaps, that’s why he needed to defend his practices in the face of the scientific facts, which show no significant benefit for minors with gender dysphoria after treatment with hormones, drugs and surgery.

“[I]t doesn’t mean that the surgery that urologists are considering or subsequent medications… is not going to have long-term benefit. I think that’s an area that we’re still looking at very carefully,” he told Urology Times.

“And I think that more likely it’s that when treatments are optimized, these diagnoses start to melt away over time,” the doctor later claimed.

It’s not the first that Klein, who makes his living in transgender care of minors, has been under fire for his statements.

Previously, Klein authored a “study” that said children’s human rights were being violated by legislation in several states that seeks to stop dangerous treatments such as hormones and puberty blockers for youth suffering from gender dysphoria.

“Prior research has found that children can begin participating in their medical decision-making as early as age seven years with gradual increases in decision-making capacity,” wrote several authors, including Klein, in a piece at the American Journal of Public Health, the Daily Mail reported, calling the research an editorial.

Klein, who was previously in charge of adolescent care at Fort Belvoir, admitted in 2016 that he bent insurance rules to get a child gender treatments by re-diagnosing a child with early onset puberty.

At the time, military insurance wouldn’t cover the $15,000 cost of hormone blockers required to treat a minor who wanted to transition, but it would cover treatment for early onset puberty.

Klein’s recent comments about gender treatment as a panacea for mental health problems, however, did not stop the Pentagon from rejecting his hypothesis that gender treatment is a substitute for mental health care.

“Hormone therapy is not a treatment for psychotic conditions,” the Pentagon told Fox News plainly.