Pediatrician Group Warns Against ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Trans-Identifying Adolescents

The American College of Pediatricians cautioned against “gender-affirming care” for transgender adolescents as current literature on the subject does not offer “long-term evidence” that medical intervention “benefit their mental well-being.”

In a position paper on trans-identifying adolescents, the group asserted, “There are no long-term studies demonstrating benefits nor studies evaluating risks associated with the medical and surgical interventions provided to these adolescents,” adding, “There is no long-term evidence that mental health concerns are decreased or alleviated after ‘gender affirming therapy.’”

The group noted that many individuals who have sought treatment later regret doing so, and “seek to align their gender identity with their sex.”

“But what is appropriate treatment for ‘transgender’ adolescents,” the group asked. “Will social transition, medications, and surgical intervention prevent or treat depression and suicidal behaviors?”

They noted that most of the research on the topic is “severely flawed.”

“Small sample sizes, biased recruitment, patients lost to follow up, and extremely short durations of follow-up are some of the most common problems seen in the literature. In addition, studies on long-term follow up are, of necessity, reporting on individuals who ‘transitioned’ years ago when, in order to undergo medical and surgical ‘transition,’ the patients had to be adults who had received intense psychological evaluation.”

“The recent surge in the adolescent population identifying as transgender is unprecedented, and no long-term follow up studies are obviously available,” they noted. “Even so, the long-term follow up research on transgender adults is concerning for its inability to show improvement in mental health.”

The push for “gender-affirming care” in educational literature has also been condemned.

In January, more than 150 health professionals signed an open letter to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), calling for it to remove a textbook advocating for “gender-affirming care.”

The textbook, Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care (GAPC), has been described as the “first textbook dedicated to providing affirming, intersectional, and evidence-informed psychiatric care for transgender, non-binary, and/or gender-expansive (TNG) people.”

According to the letter’s signatories, “The book’s claims of being evidence-informed are untenable. GAPC omits any in-depth analysis of the evidence to date, dismisses ‘scientific neutrality’ as ‘a fallacy,’ and chooses authors with the correct ‘lived experiences’ and ‘community impact of prior work over academic titles.’”

The health professionals then called for the APA to “withdraw” the textbook.