this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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Here's a study from the US NIH (from before Trump, JFK Jr, and Elon Musk attacked it with a chainsaw, a sledgehammer, and napalm)
Here's an article from Psychology Today
And lastly, a study from Journal of Applied Nursing and Health
Will that do?
The 2nd link isn't really research, it's the opinion of a psychologist. The 3rd one is specifically about circumcisions with no anesthetic, which (as far as I know) is not how it works in a hospital. Again, my opinion is specifically about circumcisions done in a hospital by doctors. I think we both agreed before I opened any of these that non-doctors should not under any circumstances do a procedure like this.
The first one, the NIH link, is much more compelling, and has changed my mind. Specifically from the results:
If I'm reading that correctly, there's statistically significant correlation between anxiety + self-isolating behavior & circumcision.
Their proposed method as to how those things are linked is the following:
So as far as I understand, their argument is that post-op infant, after coming off the anesthetic at the hospital (hopefully), is still in some pain for a while. Pain means more crying, irritability, etc until it's fully healed. This disrupts the parents, which then stresses the baby out. That snowballs into elementary school and beyond.
That's not nearly as extreme as you were describing, but it still counts as a potential source of trauma.
EDIT: Lol, this is why I prefer actual research to a blog post. The second link starts like this:
Then cites a study:
So, I looked for that study. There's a good reason why she didn't cite the actual name of the study, considering how she started her argument:
Ritual and Medical Circumcision among Filipino Boys
Reading what the "medical circumcision" consists of in the paper itself, yeah, no shit it causes PTSD. It's at 7-14 years old, en masse, with a bunch of scared boys crammed into a room able to hear everything going on in the operating room next door.