UK’s National Health Service warns trans teens may just be going through “transitory phase”

England's socialized healthcare system announced Monday that that it had tightened controls on the treatment of transgender teens and warned doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.

NHS England’s new policies ban the prescription of puberty blockers outside strict clinical trials to patient under the age of 18 and encouraged its doctors to take a “watchful approach” to gender-questioning children because evidence suggested that “in most cases, gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence,” meaning it may be a “transient phase.”

The proposal also warned that social transition, such as changing a young person’s names and pronouns or the way that they dress, was not a “neutral act” and could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning.”

It said when a prepubescent child has already socially transitioned, “the clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist.”

Social transition will not only be considered for adolescents to prevent “clinically significant distress.” Any doctors looking to change a young person’s name and pronouns should first pursue a gender dysphoria diagnosis.

The new guidelines come as U.K. parents have pushed back on some doctors’ “affirmative” approach to treating children, which includes using their preferred names and pronouns.

In July, the NHS announced that it would be closing the country’s only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people after being criticized in an independent review.

It will be replaced with two regional centers based in specialist children’s hospitals, one in London and another in northwest England, where gender identity services would be administered by new teams with experts “in pediatric medicine, autism, neurodisability and mental health” rather than by hormone specialists and therapists.

A U.K. tribunal ruled in July that the belief that “men cannot become women” is protected under the country’s equality laws.

The NHS’s new plans are under public consultation.