The number of children seeking help from Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) for ‘gender issues’ has nearly quadrupled in the past few years, with some cases involving children as young as four.

A total of 2,356 under-18s have received medical support for gender issues, nearly four times the number in 2014/15 when 673 children sought referrals from their GPs, The Sun reports.

NHS figures revealed that the majority of cases involved teens aged 15 to 16 and 329 patients were under 13 including four-year-olds. Only a minority end up receiving hormone blockers and going down the path to gender reassignment as adults.

The Tavistock Centre in North London is the UK’s only facility which assesses and treats children who believe they are the wrong sex, known as gender dysphoria.

Clinic director Dr. Polly Carmichael said: “There is no single explanation for the rise. There has been significant progress towards the acceptance and recognition of transgender and gender-diverse people.

“There is also greater knowledge about clinics and the ways into them.”

However, critics say that the rise is due to an increase in media prominence of transitioning and even it being down to school fads.

Twitter Transgender Critic ‘Questioned by Police and Banned from Leaving UK’ https://t.co/DjLq8gqlwd — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 5, 2018

Stephanie Davies-Arai, of campaign group Transgender Trend, said: “Teenagers are being influenced by an online culture which celebrates medical transition as cool.”

In fact, it was before the sharp rise in 2015 that reality star Caitlyn Jenner, the former patriarch of the pop-culturally dominant Keeping Up with the Kardashians family, came out as transgender.

In late 2015, CEO of the transgender child advocacy group Mermaids Susie Green even acknowledged that primary schools were experiencing clusters of children, including four-year-olds, wanting to change their gender because they were encouraging each other to do so.

Mental health specialists have also put forward that children want to be transgender because it is fashionable and they want to be “different”, noting that only a minority of children treated genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria.

“One said to me, ‘Dr Steve … I want to be transgender, it’s the new black’,” Australian psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Stathis has said.

Canadian psychologist Dr. Ken Zucker also found following a 2008 study that transgenderism was more prominent in children when they are in an environment where it is promoted by adults.

Christian Teacher Suspended for ‘Misgendering’ Pupil https://t.co/yAv4gYPHkF — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 12, 2017

However, this has not stopped advocacy groups such as Mermaids, teachers’ organisations, and the government pressing for the expansion of transgender ideology in schools.

Late last year, a Christian teacher was suspended from his role for accidentally ‘misgendering’ a pupil, despite him apologising at the time after he was “corrected” by the child.

The debate surrounding the morality of putting young children on the path of permanent sterilisation and bodily mutilation has led some to be been branded as ‘transphobic’.

Breitbart London reported last month that one mother, who campaigns against gender identity ideology, was allegedly reported to the police by Ms. Green of Mermaids after accusing the tax-payer-funded charity of “prey[ing]” on gay teenagers and of “mass child abuse”.

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