Marcus Evans
This content was last updated Oct. 4, 2023, 5:30 a.m. UTC
Marcus Evans is an English psychoanalyst and co-author of the 2021 book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults, along with his wife, Susan Evans.
Evans and his wife were vocal antagonists of the only transgender health clinic for transgender youth in England and Wales at that time, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) operating out of a Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust site. Evans was a member of the Board of Governors of Tavistock and Portman in Spring of 2018, but resigned in 2019, citing the Trust’s failure to adequately humor concerns from patients’ parents and doctors employed by the trust.
When doctors always give patients what they want (or think they want), the fallout can be disastrous, as we have seen with the opioid crisis. And there is every possibility that the inappropriate medical treatment of children with gender dysphoria may follow a similar path.
Education and Work
According to his LinkedIn page, Evans attended Bembridge School from 1969 to 1976.
Evans is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. He has 40 years of experience working with the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust as a consultant psychotherapist, and has had a private practice in Beckenham, in Greater London, since 1995.
Evans has also published multiple articles in medical journals, and the books Making Room for Madness in Mental Health: the psychoanalytic understanding of psychotic communications and Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults. Evans co-authored the latter book with his wife Susan, also a former employee of GIDS. In the acknowledgements for their book, Evans and his wife thank their colleagues at the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM), an organization that medical misinformation to discourage acceptance of transgender people and medical transition.
Work With and Antagonism of Tavistock Center
Evans worked for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust for decades, and temporarily retired from clinical practice in 2018 to serve as a member of Tavistock’s Board of Governors. He resigned the position after claiming to have witnessed the concerns of his colleagues and patients’ parents over the gender-affirming care treatment method disregarded by the Trust, and began to author papers and articles denying the efficacy of medical transition.
Evans frequently cites the 2011 Swedish cohort study by Cecilia Dhejne to suggest that transgender women undergoing sexual reassignment surgery experience higher rates of mortality and suicidality. (Dr. Dhejne has repeatedly spoken out against this misuse of her work.)
Due in part to the Evans’ public criticism of Tavistock and a public fund for a judicial review of the Center initiated by Evans’ wife, Dr. Hilary Cass was employed to perform a review of GIDS’ services, declaring the need for a “fundamentally different” model of care for dysphoric children.