Results of a newly published observational study suggest that a certain kind of gender-affirming care for transgender kids and young adults likely lowers rates of suicidality among those populations.
The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, examined 432 patients between the ages of 12 and 20 years old who received treatment at an unnamed Midwestern academic medical center. Patients who were set to receive gender-affirming care filled out Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) surveys prior to receiving hormone therapy (HT) treatment, then repeated the questionnaire at future visits.
Upon examining the results, the study found that suicidality among these patients “significantly declined from pretreatment to post-treatment,” and was “consistent across sex assigned at birth, age at start of therapy, and treatment duration.”
The study included all youth who initiated hormone treatment therapy during the years 2017 to 2024 at the medical center in question. The average follow-up to the surveys the patients took occurred around two years after their treatment began, with some patients providing feedback up to five years after they started.
Suicidality scores among the patients who provided responses dropped by over 67 percent, the study discovered. What’s more, of the hundreds of patients who started hormone therapy, only seven discontinued their treatment, with four saying they had a “shift in gender identity” (while still identifying as gender diverse), and one stopping out of concerns over “hair loss.” Two stopped for unknown reasons.
HT was associated with clinically meaningful reductions in suicidality over time, extending prior findings with a larger sample and longer follow-up. These study findings provide clinical evidence supporting the mental health benefits of timely access to HT in this population.
In response to the study, trans rights journalist Erin Reed wrote, “gender-affirming care saves lives.”
Such care “remains one of the most effective interventions available for transgender youth who need it,” Reed added.
Despite multiple studies showing benefits of gender-affirming care for trans youth, 27 states across the country have banned the practice, usually by citing unfounded fears regarding potential regret, errant concerns about a supposed “social contagion,” or misinformation regarding the safety of treatment methods.
The study comes as the Trump administration appears to be readying itself to attempt to ban youth-based gender-affirming care across the entirety of the U.S.
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updated a questionable study it published in May that claimed such care caused children more harm than good.
The report did not include authorship when it was first released. The new version includes the authors’ names, which critics have pointed out include a hodge-podge of anti-LGBTQ voices — including one “expert” who is the founder of a noted hate group.
Meredithe McNamara, an adolescent medicine specialist at the Yale School of Medicine, described that report’s authors as “engineers of a cottage industry that solely exists to dismantle health care for a vulnerable group of people.”
“Transgender identity is real, transgender people of all ages thrive when they have access to the care they need, and politics needs to get out of medicine,” McNamara added in her criticism of the HHS report.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited to clarify that the new study is observational.
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