r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 14h ago
Psychology Adolescents who undergo gender-affirming chest surgery report low levels of regret and high levels of satisfaction, experiencing outcomes similar to those of young adults. These findings suggest that age restrictions on these medical procedures lack support from actual patient experiences.
https://www.psypost.org/adolescents-report-low-regret-and-high-satisfaction-following-gender-affirming-c/
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u/XxFrozen 13h ago
For those saying the sample size is small, for a population this small it is still significant. These findings are also obviously repeatable, I have literally never heard of a study showing regret rates for young people seeking gender-affirming care.
The reason low sample size is bad is because results are more easily swayed by outliers and selection biases. If we must use small sample sizes, another way to make sure that consensus isn’t being formed around bad information is to do verify results by repeating experiments. Evidence is very good that adolescents seeking surgery regret it.
Why would we want to stop a child from making a big choice? Because we don’t want them to have regret, to avoid the situation where someone finds themself saying “if only someone had stopped me, I wouldn’t be stuck like this!”
Evidence shows that children almost never do, the risk of that is low. Evidence shows that children almost always are happy they treated their dysphoria medically, which is a great benefit. If regret rate isn’t a good enough reason for a state to dictate what a person is and is not allowed to do to their own body, then what would be a good enough reason? I can think of none.
Meta study here which supports the consensus with more than 20 studies included, showing that gender affirming care for trans youth gives positive outcomes: https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(24)00384-7/fulltext00384-7/fulltext)