Hormones help trans teens, U.S. study finds, as state bans loom
Debate has grown about the age at which transition treatment should begin as more people come out as trans. Some fear hormones and puberty-blocking drugs are prescribed too early or hastily, but others say access to them can be life-saving.
The new paper published by researchers at Stanford University and The Fenway Institute, a Boston-based LGBTQ+ health research center, found trans adults who started hormones before 18 were less likely to report recent suicidal thoughts than those who did not.
Lawmakers in at least five states – Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky and Mississippi – have introduced bills this year to stop minors from accessing hormones.
Last year, lawmakers in several other states presented similar bills. “We’re already seeing that so few transgender and gender-diverse people, and young people in particular, are able to access the support and medical care that they need,” said Jack Turban, lead author of the paper published in peer-reviewed journal PLOS-ONE. “Now it may be getting even worse (with) introducing these bills,” Turban, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a video call.
