97% of trans youth don’t regret transitioning, new study finds

A new study reveals that the vast majority of transgender youth largely do not detransition even after several years of transitioning.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed the experiences of 220 transgender youth who have been transitioning for at least five years. They were gathered through Princeton University’s TransYouth Project, a national, longitudinal study of transgender youth.

Related:

First national estimate of trans youth reveals devastating mental health crisis

The study calls for more interventions to create safer and more supportive environments for this demographic.

This study dispels concerns raised by anti-trans advocates that transgender youth, after several years of transitioning, would have a high rate of detransitioning, as it only reports 4% of participants as actually detransitioning at any point, with 97% of participants continuing gender-affirming care. 

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Out of the total sample, only about nine patients expressed any regret. Four participants had ceased care, one participant is planning on ceasing care, and the other four are opting to continue care. This suggests that regret is multifaceted and may not necessarily be desistance in one’s gender identity, although the researchers did not analyze the type of regret seen within the study.

In comparison, knee replacement surgery has about a 20% regret rate, according to research from 2020.

The study additionally had a secondary sample of 49 youth meant to represent the participants who were lost in additional follow-ups. 94% of this sample were satisfied with their transition. This suggests that there is not substantial bias within trans youth lost to survey attrition in similar longitudinal studies.

The study had an initial cohort of 317 youth, and recruitment began in 2013. Youth were talked to a decade later in 2023, where they had to be a minimum of age 12 to participate so that researchers could talk to the youth one-on-one. The sample was predominantly white and wealthy. Participants were asked about their satisfaction and experiences, along with reporting any side effects on numerical scales.

“I wish we didn’t need research like this, but we do,” said Chris Barcelos, an associate professor of women’s gender sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, to the Washington Post. He was not involved with this study. “It’s important that there is more data to support a thing that trans people … know, which is that there’s a really low rate of regret and really high rates of satisfaction with gender-affirming care for young people.”

“The thing that people misunderstand about gender-affirming care is that it’s not easy to get … even if you live in a state where there is no legislative or policy barriers,” Barcelos said. “Research has showed us that many more trans people – youth and adults – desire gender-affirming care than are able to access it.”

Kristina Olsen, lead author of the study, told the Washington Post, “There are huge disparities in who accesses that care,” tying into a limitation of the study. She said that due to disparities in who accesses healthcare, the sample of research studies is going to be predominantly white and wealthy.

She additionally said that the regret in the study is multifaceted. “It’s kind of a wide range of things that we included in regret. It could have been to anything.” Not all regret is necessarily youth ceasing to identify as their gender identity – it could be issues with side effects of the medication or complaints about not being placed on hormones instead of puberty blockers.

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