Gender identity among adolescents initiating hormone therapy is "highly stable," the authors write.
Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:
A new study of Canadian adolescents who were referred to pediatric gender clinics is now part of a growing body of evidence showing that rates of “detransition” are remarkably low. An overwhelming majority (97.1%) of adolescents who were referred to university-associated clinics in Canada for gender-affirming care continued to identify as transgender or non-binary after an average of 2.4 years. Only 2.9% re-identified as being gender aligned with their sex assigned at birth in that time frame.
“These findings support that within a clinical context involving comprehensive psychosocial assessment and support, gender identity among adolescents is highly stable, and rates of reidentification with birth assigned gender and cessation of GAH [gender-affirming hormones] are low,” the authors concluded. Researchers looked at 445 youth diagnosed with gender dysphoria who were seen at four clinics in Canada between 2012 and 2017: Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Diversity Clinic, IWK Trans Health Clinic at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, BC Children’s Hospital Gender Clinic, and Alberta Children’s Hospital Metta Clinic. Of those participants, 331 (74.4%) were assigned female at birth and 114 (25.6%) were assigned male at birth. Of them, 353 began gender-affirming hormone therapy. Only four later stopped hormones, and just one stopped while also returning to an identity aligned with their sex assigned at birth, constituting less than 1% of those who received hormones, the study revealed. The other three discontinued hormones for reasons unrelated to gender identity. After an average of about two and a half years, just 13 participants from the study group (or 2.9%) returned to an identity aligned with their sex assigned as birth. Some youth shifted between binary and nonbinary identities, illustrating that changes in how young people describe their gender, but these shifts should not automatically be classified as detransition, the authors said.
A new study from Canada published in the Journal of Adolescent Health debunks the anti-trans canard that “many teens regret their transitions”, as it finds that detransition rates for trans teens are very low.
