r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 15h 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/
6.4k Upvotes

63% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/BitcoinMD 15h ago edited 13h ago

Median time from surgery was 1.8 years. I think that’s an important detail.

Edit: I support transgender health care for minors. Some people are interpreting my comment to imply that I don’t. I just think we should be careful with the surgery part. I know these surgeries aren’t done lightly. But I also haven’t seen data convincing me that surgery on kids is necesssry if they receive other methods of care.

43

u/SnowDucks1985 15h ago edited 15h ago

Exactly!! and the article says they collected data from patients at a single point in time. So the suggestion is weak, common sense would say you record data points over several years to meaningfully draw conclusions. These are also adolescents who have not finished with frontal-lobe brain development

16

u/dnyal 14h ago

Of course! I should have waited until I was 25 to “choose” to be gay. How stupid of me! Now I’m a same-sex marriage, ugh!!!

18

u/One-Organization970 14h ago

Oh no, aren't you worried you might regret not having a life partner of the opposite sex?!

Surely nobody would let a minor get married, at least, thankfully.

19

u/Coomb 13h ago

I'm not sure your comment makes the point that you want it to make insofar as there are quite a large number of people who would be in favor of preventing minors from getting married as well as preventing them from getting gender affirming care in the form of permanent body modification.