More Children Seek Help for Gender Dysphoria
More Children Seek Help for Gender Dysphoria
Puberty seems to be the tipping point. By delaying it, some experts worry that kids are being denied a chance to try to reconnect to their birth sex.
But puberty can also be devastating. “It’s one more reminder to these kids that their body is not matching their minds. It’s your body betraying you in yet another way,” Lagerstrom says.
At age 10, before he started the leuprolide, Sam went through one menstrual cycle.
“It was terrible. It was horrible,” Lagerstrom says. “You think, ‘One period, that’s no big deal.’ We misjudged what that would do to him. It put him over the edge.”
Surveys show a staggering 50% of young transgender people will attempt suicide by their 20th birthday.
Still, stories like Sam’s are the exception, not the rule. And there’s currently no way for doctors or parents to know who may be helped or harmed by early treatment.
“I can’t begin to tell you how phenomenally helpful it would be if we had some marker, whether it was measurable on an MRI or whatever, because if we knew which kids were truly going to be in the 20 percent, then I think everybody would say then those kids should be raised in the affirmed gender and the gender consistent with their brain wiring,” Spack says. “Then we would not torture these kids by making them live in the birth gender against their best interests.”
Dutch researchers are trying to find ways to distinguish kids who will go on to live as a different gender as adults from those who won’t. A study they did found some clues. Kids who become transgendered as adults tend to be more strongly gender dysphoric than those whose gender shift fades. They use words like ‘I am’ the opposite sex instead of ‘I wish I was.’ Girls were more likely to persist in a gender transition than boys.
The No. 1 predictor, at least for males who became female, was if their parents had socially transitioned them at an early age.
More Children Seek Help for Gender Dysphoria
Early Treatment continued...
Puberty seems to be the tipping point. By delaying it, some experts worry that kids are being denied a chance to try to reconnect to their birth sex.
But puberty can also be devastating. “It’s one more reminder to these kids that their body is not matching their minds. It’s your body betraying you in yet another way,” Lagerstrom says.
At age 10, before he started the leuprolide, Sam went through one menstrual cycle.
“It was terrible. It was horrible,” Lagerstrom says. “You think, ‘One period, that’s no big deal.’ We misjudged what that would do to him. It put him over the edge.”
Surveys show a staggering 50% of young transgender people will attempt suicide by their 20th birthday.
Still, stories like Sam’s are the exception, not the rule. And there’s currently no way for doctors or parents to know who may be helped or harmed by early treatment.
“I can’t begin to tell you how phenomenally helpful it would be if we had some marker, whether it was measurable on an MRI or whatever, because if we knew which kids were truly going to be in the 20 percent, then I think everybody would say then those kids should be raised in the affirmed gender and the gender consistent with their brain wiring,” Spack says. “Then we would not torture these kids by making them live in the birth gender against their best interests.”
Discussion Over Strong Social Support
Dutch researchers are trying to find ways to distinguish kids who will go on to live as a different gender as adults from those who won’t. A study they did found some clues. Kids who become transgendered as adults tend to be more strongly gender dysphoric than those whose gender shift fades. They use words like ‘I am’ the opposite sex instead of ‘I wish I was.’ Girls were more likely to persist in a gender transition than boys.
The No. 1 predictor, at least for males who became female, was if their parents had socially transitioned them at an early age.