Britain’s youngest sex swap patient has decided to reverse the procedure after living as a woman for less than a year.
The 18-year-old, who was formerly known as Brad Cooper, has been having hormone injections to make him look like a woman.
But now the teenager, who is currently known as Ria, has decided to revert back to living as a man.
Life-changing
Child psychologist Karen Sherr, formerly of Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “It’s absolutely ludicrous for young kids to make such huge life-changing decisions”.
She added: “Children need to be allowed to grow into adults before they go through with something like a sex change because, as this case shows, at that age you don’t know yourself well enough.”
Ria has stopped the female hormone therapy treatment, and is no longer planning on going through with the full sex change operation which was scheduled for January.
Alone
The teenager told the Sunday Mirror: “The hormones have made me feel up and down. One minute I feel moody and the next minute I feel really happy.”
Ria, who has tried to commit suicide twice, added: “I get these dark moods when nothing seems right.
“The night I tried to slash my wrists I’d downed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and just thought about how alone I am, how my decision has alienated my family and how I will have to become a boy again to resolve it.
Regret
“I don’t want to live in isolation, away from everyone I love. This is the only way forward. I just want to be happy and this is my last chance.”
Many transsexuals regret their decision to live in the opposite sex. A Home Office report on transsexualism, released in April 2000, said: “Many people revert to their biological sex after living for some time in the opposite sex”.
In 2010, a man who underwent sex change surgery to look like a woman – then changed back – said the NHS should halt all sex change operations.