At a discussion on gender identification at the baby and adolescent psychology section of the La Pitié Salpétrière Hospital, Paris, September 15, 2022. LA MONDE FLORENCE BROCHOIRE
While transgender minors in the United Kingdom have recently been barred from public care facilities, a report by French senators from the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party calls for a ban on all access to gender-affirming hormones. In France, there is no data on the number of trans younger people. In the United States and Canada, it is estimated that 1.2% of teenagers are transgender. Only some of them want to undergo health transition.
The number of treatments is also difficult to estimate because trans teenagers are also prescribed hormones and puberty blockers. But, if we look at the sample of patients at the specific training at the La Pitié-Salpêtrière clinic in Paris, of the 239 transgender patients over the last 10 years, less than half used for treatments. The cure typically begins 10 to 14 months after the initial consultations between a home and health teams.
What are age filters?
These artificial hormones have been used for the treatment of early beginnings puberty, which is defined as occurring before the ages of 8 in girls and 9 in boys, for about 40 years. The treatment typically lasts two to three years and works by preventing the production of sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone) and the activation of the gonads (ovaries and testicles). It stops, among other things, the early stoppage or halting of growth that occurs during menstruation.
These substances have been prescribed to transgender adolescents, from age 8 to 14 depending on the situation, since the later 1990s in the Netherlands and since the 2010s in France. According to several studies in Europe, between 10% and 40% of transgender minors use them. To time, in France, they are prescribed off-brand, as may be authorized by law when justified in the patient’s attention. The National Council of the Order of Physicians noted that 80% of school medical medicine treatments are offline in an online document for 2020.
The goal here is to “reduce the young woman’s struggling in the face of the physical changes brought on by puberty (breasts, locks, voice, muscle mass) while giving them time to explore their identity,” said Professor Laetitia Martinerie, a pediatric endocrinologist at Robert-Debré Hospital, who sees minors with questions and/or in transition in a particular comprehensive consultation.
Treatment can be stopped at any time, and if it is interrupted, physiological puberty will resume. After transvestin is introduced in trans males or after the removal of the testicles in some older people, blockers are removed. In a cohort of 6,793 young people in the Netherlands aged 12 to 18, according to various studies on this subject, there are very low rates of discontinuation of puberty blockers prior to hormone intake, which demonstrates a persistent desire for transition in these young people.
