Transgender people are being let down by “extraordinarily long” NHS waiting lists, which are contributing to self-harm and suicide, an inquest was told.
Alice Litman, 20, had been waiting to receive gender-affirming healthcare for 1,023 days when she died on Thursday 26 May last year in Brighton, the family said, before her inquest which started yesterday Monday (18 September).
Alice, of Albion Hill, Brighton, and originally from Surrey, was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Surrey and to the Community Mental Health Recovery Service (CMHRS) before she turned 18.
But her mother told the inquest at the Sussex County Cricket Ground, in Eaton Road, Hove, yesterday that she was “cast out of care” when she turned 18 because she did not meet the threshold for adult intervention – despite having tried to end her life on two occasions.
In court today (Tuesday 19 September) a statement by Michael Webberley, co-founder of Gender GP, was read out.
He met Ms Litman in September 2019 and said that her parents reached out to him after she was referred to the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust because the waiting list there was so long.
He said: “We see so many people let down by the NHS. The extraordinarily long waiting list is causing severe mental health rates for trans people.
“The unacceptable suicide and self-harm rates in this group is a travesty.”
He added that Ms Litman’s death was “preventable” and that the waiting list for transgender people to receive treatment should be “days and weeks – not decades”.
Alice Litman’s mother, Caroline Litman, a former NHS psychiatrist, said in a statement yesterday that her daughter’s death could have been avoided with “access to the right support”.
The court was told that Alice first told her sister Kate that she felt she was a woman in September 2018.
She went to see a GP (general practitioner) about her gender identity later in 2018 – an experience which Mr Webberley said “did not go well”.
James Barrett, director of the Gender Identity Clinic at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, gave evidence to the inquest today.
Dr Barrett said that they were treating patients who had initially been referred to them five years ago.
Waiting lists at other clinics could be longer, with people waiting six years at the Northamptonshire Gender Identity Clinic and where the average waiting time rising, according to the latest figures.
He added that young people moving from child to adult psychiatric services faced problems “across the board” and not just in the transgender community.
Dr Barrett said: “The threshold to be seen by adult mental health services is very high.”
Dr Litman told the court yesterday: “I did not feel that CAMHS took Alice’s problems seriously enough.
“The CAMHS nursing team effectively acted as gatekeepers, making it very hard for Alice to access support that she clearly needed and would not have received had it not been for intervention from her GP at our insistence.”
She added: “Alice was suddenly cast out of care because she did not meet the adult threshold for intervention despite having been identified as needing support the week before.
“The sudden switch between services (and thresholds for support) on the day she turned 18 left her abandoned at a moment when she particularly needed help.”
The inquest continues.
