Children as young as 13 are being railroaded into changing gender by overzealous NHS therapists who parents fear are misdiagnosing their young patients.

Concerned parents have spoken of their worry that clinic staff are ‘blindly accepting’ children’s claims that they were born the wrong sex and are failing to treat serious mental health conditions.

A campaign group, Transgender Trend, is now receiving pleas for help from ‘desperate’ parents every week.

Gender switch: YouTube star Alex Bertie before and after he started taking testosterone

One mother was stunned when a 15-year-old girl was referred to a specialist transgender clinic after a consultation of just 40 minutes. The outcry comes as:

Doctors fear being sued after the NHS signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ banning staff from challenging patients who believe they are born the wrong sex;

Teenage YouTube stars who enthuse about changing sex are making being transgender ‘cool’, according to parents;

Children being referred for transgender treatment on the NHS have surged to record numbers – there are now 50 a week.

YouTube star Alex Bertie shows off his stubble after taking testosterone

Sinister messages blamed for sparking ‘contagion’ Messages promoting being transgender are being shared widely among young people on popular social media sites such as Instagram and Tumblr. One message, entitled ‘just LGBT [lesbian gay bisexual and transgender] stuff’, provides advice on how to get ‘chest binders’ that can be used to enable a girl to look like a boy. Web users can get tips on how to obtain hormone drugs and other sex change aids. But some of the messages are more sinister. Anonymous writers encourage teenagers to harm themselves or even to threaten suicide if their parents refuse to allow them to swap gender. Parents have blamed these messages for sparking a ‘social contagion’, which has resulted in the rapidly increasing numbers of young people identifying as transgender. Advertisement

While children are coming forward in ever-increasing numbers to say that they believe they were born the wrong sex, there are fears that therapists are ignoring the possibility of other conditions.

Hundreds of alarming stories have been posted over the past two months on an online forum set up by a father who says his teenage daughter is making a mistake in seeking to change gender. The father, who asked to remain anonymous, said: ‘The universal experience [of the parents] is that whether the child has been diagnosed with autism, depression or ADHD, the therapists are completely discounting any other symptoms.’

Stephanie Arai-Davies, who runs Transgender Trend, said: ‘I would estimate that we’ve been contacted by more than 100 parents over the past two years. What parents are saying is they’re deeply worried that NHS counsellors and therapists are immediately suggesting an appointment with a gender identity clinic.’

Ms Arai-Davies said the majority of the enquiries she receives from parents asking for help were about their daughters. Recent figures from the Tavistock Clinic, Britain’s only NHS gender identity service for under-18s, show that their referral rates have rocketed from just 97 in 2009 to more than 2,000 in 2016-17, with 1,400 last year from girls.

Ms Arai-Davies said parents were angry at the way NHS mental health services were presenting them with only one option – that their child should change gender. She explained that many parents believe their children are suffering from other mental health issues.

But teenagers are putting their problems down to confusion over their gender after being ‘brainwashed’ by social media sites promoting being transgender.

Many of the parents are ‘terrified’ to speak out about these views for fear of being accused of transphobia and bombarded with online abuse by ‘trans activists’, Ms Arai-Davies claimed.

The Mail on Sunday was contacted by a number of parents who wanted to tell their stories anonymously. One mother, from South-West London, told how two years ago she received a call from her 15-year-old daughter’s school requesting an urgent meeting because the teenager was claiming she was ‘stuck in the wrong body’.

The next thing she knew the school had referred the matter to the NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) where a psychologist diagnosed the girl with early signs of depression. She was passed on to an NHS ‘family therapist’ who, after a 40-minute assessment, decided to refer her to a gender identity clinic. The girl’s mother demanded that the whole process be slowed down.

‘I said I know she wants a referral to a gender clinic but I have concerns that I want to talk about before any referral,’ she recalled.

‘I’ve known my child for 15 years and he only saw her for 40 minutes yet he thinks he knows everything about her and is blindly accepting that she wants to be a boy.’

The mother-of-three said the therapist refused to listen to her worries that her daughter had been ‘groomed’ by a gay, male friend. The schoolgirl had been bombarded with hundreds of Instagram messages from the boy accusing her of being ‘ugly’ as a girl, encouraging her to bind her breasts and to start taking testosterone. The therapist dismissed the messages as ‘jokes’ and continued to insist on the child being referred, the mother said.

After two appointments, the mother complained to CAMHS about the therapist and the family stopped seeing him. However, the teenager – now 17 – was eventually referred to a gender identity clinic and against her mother’s wishes has started taking testosterone which she ordered online.

Online: Young children watch transgender YouTube star Miles McKenna

Young stars making sex swaps ‘cool’ Messages promoting being transgender are being shared widely among young people on popular social media sites such as Instagram and Tumblr. One message, entitled ‘just LGBT [lesbian gay bisexual and transgender] stuff’, provides advice on how to get ‘chest binders’ that can be used to enable a girl to look like a boy. Web users can get tips on how to obtain hormone drugs and other sex change aids. But some of the messages are more sinister. Anonymous writers encourage teenagers to harm themselves or even to threaten suicide if their parents refuse to allow them to swap gender. Parents have blamed these messages for sparking a ‘social contagion’, which has resulted in the rapidly increasing numbers of young people identifying as transgender. Advertisement

Another mother from London said an NHS mental health expert refused to listen to her protests that her 13-year-old daughter’s issues were not really about her gender.

The teenager told her parents in July 2016 that she wanted to be a boy and was referred by her GP to CAMHS, attending her first appointment in January this year.

Her mother told the psychologist she believed her daughter was suffering from anxiety. The 47-year-old said she also thought her daughter had been heavily influenced by messages sent to her by other adolescents on social media. She said: ‘One said she should tell me she will drink bleach if we don’t let her become a boy.’

But the psychotherapist still continued to push the parents to refer to their child as ‘he’ and even allow the teen to bind her chest. The mother added: ‘They just weren’t listening to the one person who knows their child best. I was saying, “I know her – you don’t.”’ A month ago the mother took her daughter to a private mental health service where the psychologist shared her scepticism about the girl wanting to change sex.

The youngster now rarely mentions wanting to be a boy.

Psychotherapists warned that an agreement between the NHS and professional health bodies on the treatment of transgender people will lead to more children being diagnosed with gender dysphoria – the belief you are born in the wrong body. The agreement, known as the memorandum of understanding, which came into effect this month, bans therapists from practising ‘conversion therapy’ – trying to convince people with gender identity issues that they were born the right sex.

Psychotherapist Bob Withers cautioned that the memorandum could prevent therapists from exploring patients who say they are transgender but are suffering from other mental health conditions.

Mr Withers, who has treated a number of transgender patients, said: ‘The danger of this memorandum is it could easily be translated that looking at the psychological reasons for gender dysphoria could be seen as a motive to convert somebody out of their chosen gender identity into a different gender identity. But if you don’t do it then this person could have surgery and end up regretting it.’