Time to Think by Amazonundefined

Price last update: 09/03/2024

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SHORTLISTED 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 NHSs flagship gender service for children.
The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman Trust in North London, was set up initially to provide for the most part talking therapies to young people who were questioning their gender identity. But in the last decade GIDS has referred more than a thousand children, some as young as nine years old, for medication to block their puberty. In the same period, the number of young people seeking GIDS's help exploded, increasing twenty-five-fold. 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journalist Hannah Barnes has had unprecedented access to thousands of pages of documents, including internal emails and unpublished reports, and well over a hundred hours of personal testimony from GIDS clinicians, former service users and senior Tavistock figures.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.
Recenzja
An
exemplary and detailed analysis
of a place whose doctors, Barnes writes, most commonly describe it as mad. This is
a powerful and disturbing book
-
Financial Times
A
deeply reported, scrupulously non-judgmental
account of the collapse of the NHS service, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with former clinicians and patients. It is also
a jaw-dropping insight into failure
: failure of leadership, of child safeguarding and of the NHS -
Sunday Times
This book is
a testament to the moral courage
of Hutchinson and colleagues who sought to expose the chaos and insanity they saw while practising by stealth the in-depth therapy they believed young people deserved And Hannah Barnes has honoured them with her
dogged, irreproachable yet gripping account
-
The Times
'This
incredibly important book
shows that we still dont know how many children were damaged for life. I want every institution and every politician who pontificates about gender to read this book and ask what happened to all those lost girls and boys and why they were complicit -
Daily Telegraph
At times, the world Barnes describes feels like some dystopian novel. But it isnt, of course. It really happened, and
she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for
-
Observer
The question Barnes puts at the centre of this book is Are we hurting children?" What follows is
an extraordinarily sensitive and important
piece of work that exposes the huge price some of our young have had to pay for a system that was simply not rigorous enough in asking that question.
Time to Think
which explores the rapid rise and phenomenal growth of the GIDS clinic at the Tavistock is
essential reading
for anyone who wants to understand how safeguarding concerns got lost, despite the best intentions of practically all those involved.
'The
testimonies in the book are raw, honest and moving
. More than that they are a
vital piece of evidence
that shows without prejudice where things went right, where things went wrong and, remarkably, the thousands of cases of young people where we still dont know'
Emily Maitlis
'
Time to Think
shows what happens when the exponents of an ideology, so certain of its righteousness, capture a field of medicine, silencing critics, refusing even to collect follow-up data on whether its treatments actually work' -
The Times
Best Books of 2023 So Far
A
powerful
investigation The interviews with staff and children some who have happily transitioned and some who have not show how
complex the issues are
. Not a comfortable read but
meticulous and thought-provoking
- Camilla Cavendish,
Financial Times,
Best Summer Books of 2023
'
Meticulous and scrupulously researched
book on Gids downfall' - Lucy Mangan,
Guardian
'
A brilliant book written in a very thoughtful way
about the failures of the Tavistock clinic' - Wes Streeting
O autorze
Hannah Barnes
spent fifteen years at the BBC specialising in analytical and investigative journalism on both television and radio, most recently as Investigations Producer for BBC Newsnight. She led the programmes coverage of the care available to young people experiencing gender-related distress, which helped precipitate an extensive NHS review and led directly to an inspection by the healthcare regulator the Care Quality Commission, which branded GIDS - the NHSs only youth gender clinic in England - Inadequate. The work was nominated for an array journalism awards, including the prestigious RTS Television Journalism Awards.
Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children
is a
Sunday Times
bestseller and was shortlisted for both the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Orwell Prize. Hannah is now an Associate Editor and Writer at the
New Statesman
.