Study offers support for family discussions
“This study is important to help provide more data regarding the experiences of gender-diverse youth,” M. Brett Cooper, MD, of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, said in an interview. “The results of a study like this can be used by clinicians to help provide advice and guidance to parents and families as they support their children through their gender journey,” said Dr. Cooper, who was not involved in the study. The current study “also provides evidence to support that persistent, insistent, and consistent youth have an extremely low rate of retransition to a gender that aligns with their sex assigned at birth. This refutes suggestions by politicians and others that those who seek medical care have a high rate of regret or retransition,” Dr. Cooper emphasized.
Dr. M. Brett Cooper
“I was not surprised at all by their findings,” said Dr. Cooper. “These are very similar to what I have seen in my own panel of gender-diverse patients and what has been seen in other studies,” he noted.
The take-home message of the current study does not suggest any change in clinical practice, Dr. Cooper said. “Guidance already suggests supporting these youth on their gender journey and that for some youth, this may mean retransitioning to identify with their sex assigned at birth,” he explained.
The study was supported in part by grants to the researchers from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Arcus Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. The researchers had no financial conflicts to disclose.