I'm out

[Nickey one]

Just come out to my doctor told him I would like to go on HRT he is sending me to see gender therapists what should I expect now?

[celeste26]

The Drs who normally handle such things as hormones are endocrinologists, but most of them will not accept you as a patient unless you have a recommendation from some gender therapist. There is something referred to as "the letter" generated by the gender therapists to let the endo know its OK. There is no specific length of time the therapists must take so if they are convinced the first meeting they can give you this letter that soon, but that is unusual spend some time/sessions talking to the gender specialists their advice is usually valuable.

After the letter is written take it to the endo and begin HRT. It might be worthwhile to keep going to the therapist anyway because the process of going through the effects from HRT sometimes need counseling or commiserating anyway. This forum is not a substitute for good therapy

[Rianna Humble]

If you are going the NHS route, then your first port of call will be a mental health specialist who will screen you for any other conditions that may need to be addresssed before or at the same time as your Gender Dysphoria. (S)he will then promise to write a recommendation "Straight Away". Don't confuse that phrase with it's meaning in English - this is NHS speak for "in 6 to 8 weeks time".

After that, it will be down to how the new privatised "Clinical Commissioning Group" wants to handle the request for funding from whichever Gender Identity Clinic covers your area. At this point, the watchword is "patience".

When you get to the clinic, you will probably meet your primary clinician who will do a preliminary assessment before you are invited back to see another Gender Specialist to confirm the opinion of the first. If all goes well, the second doctor will promise to write to your GP "Straight Away" (by now you know what that means).

I know that my primary clinician has an interesting way of conducting his sessions with me - we talk about almost anything other than the Gender Dysphoria but he is assessing how well I am doing ...

[Nickey one]

Can I thank Celeste 26 and of course Rianna humble for the info. On what happens next will keep you all posted once again thank you x

[becky77]

As Rianna said.
at least thatS how most Doctors work. However there is a change in the guidelines and your Dr can actually do the referral themself, good luck with that though as I went through a string of doctors, till I found one who didn't look scared of the whole subject.
There are new guidlines, assuming your Dr keeps upto date with things, but you can research yourself and take a print out of the latest guidelines in with you. I would always recommend gathering as much information as possible, as so few doctors know about us. The referral will take you to GIC but that takes months and months and then they will carry out their own assessment of which there is two, so just the same as what Rianna said.
I think the doctor would be either unfamiliar, or most likely uncomfortable doing this, mainly because they will want to make sure you are not having any other mental health issues, depression being common.
So yes you can get a direct referral but it's highly unlikely. Unless the guidlines have changed again since I went through this process.
Another option is to go private of which there are two very good gender specialists I know of, this can speed up things but comes at a real cost.

Best of luck.

[becky77]

After that, it will be down to how the new privatised "Clinical Commissioning Group" wants to handle the request for funding from whichever Gender Identity Clinic covers your area.

Oh didn't notice that first time, how new is that? Perhaps my info is already out of date.

[emma5410]

Is you GP referring you to a therapist or a psychiatrist at the Community Mental Health Team?