Susan Evans
This content was last updated Nov. 15, 2023, 10:42 p.m. UTC
Susan Evans is an English psychotherapist, a prominent member of the anti-trans organization the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), and co-author of the 2021 book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults, along with her husband, Marcus Evans.
Evans and her husband 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. She worked at the Tavistock Center as a psychotherapist between 2003 and 2007, before resigning due to objections to GIDS practice of gender-affirming healthcare.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to discuss the needs of the patients who displayed clinical curiosity. The beginnings of the more ‘affirmative model’ of care were taking root.
Education and Work
Evans trained to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the former Lincoln Clinic and Center for Psychotherapy, now the British Psychotherapy Foundation, of which she remains a member. She is also a member of the London Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Service, and is registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) according to LinkedIn.
Evans has primarily worked for the NHS as a psychotherapist, spending twelve years at Tavistock and Portman before resigning and opening her own practice alongside her husband.
Evans also co-authored with her husband the book Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults. In the acknowledgements for their book, Evans and her husband thank their colleagues at the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine, an anti-trans organization that spreads medical misinformation to discourage acceptance of transgender people and medical transition.
Work With and Antagonism of Tavistock Center
Evans worked with GIDS for four years, between 2003 and 2007, before leaving the Center in protest of the provision of gender-affirming care to gender dysphoric youth. After her husband, Marcus Evans, resigned from a position on the Board of Governors of Tavistock and Portman in 2019 over similar complaints, she joined him in publicly criticizing GIDS’ methods.
Shortly after launching a crowdfunding campaign to demand a review of Tavistock’s practices, Evans dropped out of the case and was replaced by detransitioner Keira Bell. Criticism of GIDS by the Evanses and others resulted in a review and the eventual decision to close the facility in favor of regional centers, but delays and uncertainty have plagued the effort and regional centers have yet to be built.