A number of European authorities and international medical groups “now recommend psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgeries as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth,” the doctors wrote.
The writers urged medical societies in the U.S. to “align their recommendations with the best available evidence” rather than “exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks.”
Among the signatories to the letter include Anne Wæhre, a senior consultant at Norway’s Oslo University Hospital. Norway is among the European countries that have recently pulled back on offering extreme transgender treatment to youth, with the country’s Healthcare Investigation Board earlier this year demanding that Norway revise its guidelines for surgeries and hormone treatment for transgender-identifying children.
Several French doctors also signed the letter, including Picardy Jules Verne University professor Celine Masson. France’s National Academy of Medicine said in a statement last year that “a great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents” who claim to identify as the opposite sex.
The “greatest reserve” is required for the usage of hormones in young children, the academy said, pointing to side effects “such as impact on growth, bone fragility, risk of sterility, emotional and intellectual consequences and, for girls, symptoms reminiscent of menopause.”
In the U.S., some researchers have attempted to explain the explosion in transgender-identifying youths around the country and the world. In 2018, Lisa Littman, then an adjunct professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, authored a controversial report on the phenomenon of what she deemed “rapid onset of gender dysphoria.”