It is no wonder that we have so little data on detransition. This is from an October, 2021 study published by Cambridge University Press from 3 researchers, Hall, Mitchel, Sachder. The following paragraphs were devoted to the phenomenon of those who start the cross-sex medicalization but then regret, desist, discontinue. Very little comes up about helping them to adjust to life after these reversals.
The section about detransitioners from the published study is below the line. This study comes up in a search of “research on detranstioners” .
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There is a dearth of prospective studies and no controlled prospective studies.Reference Hughto JM and Reisner4 Equally longitudinal studies suffer from loss to follow up. A problem arising from this is that little is known about all possible outcomes of people accessing gender services and limited data with which to compare the pathways we have described. An older Dutch study reported 15% of those starting cross-sex hormones subsequently ‘dropped out’ and stopped hormones.Reference Smith, Van Goozen, Kuiper and Cohen-Kettenis24 Similar to our findings for not completing the treatment pathway, a risk factor for ‘dropping out’ was poor psychological functioning. Studies on dissatisfaction with treatment have also highlighted the association with poor baseline psychological functioning.Reference Van de Grift, Elaut, Cerwenka, Cohen-Kettenis and Kreukels25
There are limited comparable data on rates of accessing interventions. A Dutch studyReference Wiepjes, Nota, de Blok, Klaver, de Vries and Wensing-Kruger10 reported that 68.9% of adults started cross-sex hormones in the 5 years following diagnosis, lower than our finding of 94% accessing hormones. However, the same study found a higher rate of progression to GRS (77.7% compared with our 47.7%). An older UK study reported an even higher rate of progression to GRS of 94%.Reference Khoosal, Grover and Terry13 Our lower rate of accessing GRS might reflect changes in the demographics of service users across time; the service users in the older UK study were predominantly male to female. Another possible explanation for differences in accessing interventions is differing rates of diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Khoosal et alReference Khoosal, Grover and Terry13 reported that 77% met the diagnostic criteria; we do not have a comparative figure for the West of England GIC, but potentially a higher proportion of those assessed during our study period could have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. An alternative explanation for our low GRS rates might be inaccurately elicited treatment goals. A previous study highlighted the tendency of patients to say they were seeking GRS as they assumed that GICs expected to hear this.Reference Ellis, Bailey and McNeil26 It is also possible that the association we observed between mental health issues and substance misuse during transition and not accessing care is mediated by clinician bias in reluctance to refer these service users for surgery; this warrants further exploration.
Notwithstanding the possibility that the rate of detransitioning we found (6.9%) is an underestimate, it is notably higher than the only other published figure from a UK clinic of 0.33%Reference Richards and Doyle11 despite using the same case definition. This likely reflects methodological differences insofar as we looked at patients discharged by the GIC and had access to subsequent information over a 16 month period rather than looking only at service users in treatment. A US survey-based study of people identifying as transgender described patterns of detransitioning and then attempts to retransition akin to our observations.Reference James, Herman, Rankin, Keisling, Mottet and Anafi12
UteHeggen~GrassWidow 