‘No good evidence’ for gender care for youth over long term, review finds

Study commissioned by England’s health service says hormones should only be prescribed to teens with ‘extreme caution’. The evidence behind medical intervention for youth questioning their gender is “remarkably weak”, with some doctors abandoning “normal clinical approaches” to prescribe hormones to teens, a landmark review in the United Kingdom has found. There was also no evidence that puberty blockers “buy time to think”, since the vast majority of young people on them proceed to hormone treatment, according to the review. “This was closely followed by a greater readiness to start masculinising/feminising hormones in midteens, and the extension of this approach to a wider group of adolescents who would not have met the inclusion criteria for the original Dutch Study.” “Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations,” Cass added. The review was not intended to undermine the validity of transgender identities or roll back people’s right to healthcare, Cass said, but about how to “best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the NHS in relation to their gender identity.” The NHS commissioned the review in 2020, amid a sharp rise in the number of young people questioning their gender identity and concerns that some minors were being inappropriately identified as transgender.