Younger people are experiencing distress stemming from gender dysphoria, or a mismatch between their gender at birth and the one they identify with, according to new research in the US published in the journal General Psychiatry. Further, the age of those experiencing such distress is still lower for those assigned female sex at birth than those assigned male, the research found.
The researchers from Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, US, drew on data from the TriNetX database, a web-based tool for research population cohort, from 49 healthcare organisations between April 30, 2017 and April 30, 2022, which held anonymised medical records of around 66 million people, 80 per cent of whom live in the US.
The researchers focussed on 42 million 4-65 year old participants, 66,078 of whom were diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Their average age was found to be 26 – 27 for those assigned female sex at birth and 30 for those assigned male sex. Further, they were more likely to have been assigned female sex at birth – 58 vs 55 per cent. The estimated prevalence of gender dysphoria rose significantly between 2017 and 2021, while the average age of those diagnosed with it fell from 31 in 2017 to 26 in 2021, the researchers found.
However, they found the increasing trend of a gender dysphoria diagnosis among those assigned female sex at birth to be significantly more rapid than that of those assigned male sex at birth, before the age of 22. While gender dysphoria was found to begin increasing among those assigned male sex at birth at 13 years of age and peak at 23 before gradually decreasing, these ages were 11 and between 17 and 19, respectively, for those assigned female sex at birth.
The researchers suggested that the timing of puberty might explain the different patterns of gender dysphoria by sex, as girls generally enter this before boys, and it is during this time that young people tend to seek medical help for gender issues.
Social attitudes may also have a role, they add, with school-age masculine girls with gender dysphoria more likely to be accepted by their peers and feminine boys in the same situation more likely to face bullying and rejection.
As to the increase in the numbers of those with gender dysphoria, wider availability of specialist clinics and growing awareness and acceptance of gender diversity might explain these trends, the researchers suggested.
”Gender identity development heavily leans on social processes, including exploration and experimentation with external feedback. There is now increasing acceptance of gender-neutral pronouns and gender-non-congruent chosen names,” they wrote.
However, the authors also acknowledged that only 20 per cent of the participants came from countries other than the US, which may limit the wider applicability of their findings.
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