As more and more of these studies get done and made public, it is getting harder for the NTI-TRANS haters to deny the good that gender affirming care does. It also shows the lie that these red state anti-trans care laws are to protect the children. That fact is they hurt children! Hugs
A landmark new study has found that access to gender-affirming care halves suicidality among transgender people. (Getty)
A new landmark study has found that access to gender-affirming healthcare significantly reduces rates of depression, gender dysphoria, and suicidality among transgender people.
While it’s no secret that providing gender-affirming care to transgender individuals who ask for it can greatly benefit their well-being, an increase in transphobic rhetoric and bans on gender-affirming healthcare has prompted thorough medical studies into the impact of such care.
Now, brand new research conducted in Melbourne, Australia, has found that allowing transgender people to access the care they’re after can reduce suicidality by a stunning 55 per cent.
As part of the first-ever randomized controlled trial (RCT) on gender-affirming care, researchers took 64 transgender and gender-diverse adults who had been looking to start testosterone therapy and randomly split them into a treatment group and a control group.
While the treatment group was allowed to begin hormone therapy that week, the control group waited three months for their treatment to begin.
The RCT trial noted a 55 per cent drop in suicidality among transgender individuals who received gender-affirming care. (Getty Images)
Before the study began, both groups were evaluated on depression, gender dysphoria, and suicidality. Three months later, the two groups were evaluated again.
RCTs for medical care can often be hard to conduct due to practical and ethical concerns. However, researchers of this study found a way to hold an RCT for this study by incorporating a shorter follow-up period. Rather than giving the control group a placebo drug, or no treatment at all, they were simply given a longer wait time.
The results showed a notable decrease in gender dysphoria, depression, and – most significantly – suicidality.
The group that received gender-affirming care right away saw a 55 per cent reduction in suicidality compared to a 5 per cent drop within the control group.
Depression scores in the treatment group decreased by half, while gender dysphoria rates also significantly decreased.
Breaking down their findings, researchers Brendan J. Nolan MBBS, Sav Zwickl, PhD, and Peter Locke wrote: “There was a statistically significant decrease in gender dysphoria in individuals with immediate [access to gender-affirming care] compared with delayed initiation of testosterone therapy.
“A clinically significant decrease in depression and a decrease in suicidality also occurred with immediate testosterone therapy.
“The findings of this trial suggest that testosterone therapy significantly decreases gender dysphoria, depression, and suicidality in transgender and gender-diverse individuals desiring testosterone therapy.”
The results showed a notable decrease in gender dysphoria, depression, and – most significantly – suicidality. (Jama Network)
Of course, this isn’t the first time that research has shown significant drops in depression and suicide rates among transgender individuals who receive gender-affirming care.
A 2022 medical study showed that young transgender people who have access to puberty blockers are 73 per cent less at risk of suicide and report improved well-being.
But, as anti-trans activists advocate for further bans on gender-affirming care, one of the key arguments is that the evidence in support of the care isn’t up to scratch with GRADE (Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) standards.
So research like this landmark RCT is so significant to the transgender community and its allies as the fight for their healthcare rights rumbles on.
This is in direct refutation of the anti-trans haters that keep claiming that all other countries are stopping trans treatment. It is, like everything else they claim, a lie. Hugs
Hello readers and followers. In my last post I put in the line I needed to go clear my mind of the post. That was because I had to go over and over what I wrote to correct it. However I do not want people to take that as I might not want comments on the post. If you have a comment to make, please feel free to do so. And I will respond. I belong to a survivor’s forum and talking about the abuse and feed back from others can be helpful. That is why all the therapist I have seen in the past recommending writing it out even if it was only in a letter I wouldn’t ever send. It is just a way to get it out of my mind and body and try to let it go away. If you try to ignore it or deny it, if you do what I did for so very long and bury it as deep as possible never letting on why you are hurting it leads to consequences such as self harm. Thank you. Hugs
I love massages, and I used to give Ron them all the time. He can’t do them for me due to his hands hurting. But I enjoy it so much and with my hard rock tight muscles it is such a relief. I really wish I could get one of these. Hugs
Horrifying. I was once working in the yard before I understood what fire ants were when we first moved to Florida. They swarmed my legs before they started to sting as a group. That is what they do, the first ant doesn’t sting, they wait until they have a bunch of them when dealing with large prey. By dogs that love gravy, that is painful. Ron’s mother had to be hospitalized because of a fire ant attach. They are nothing to take lightly. They can kill a fully grown cow because they swarm the prey / threat. Hugs
Witness one of natures ancient wonders – Fire Ants! It has been adapting, evolving for 150 million years 14 000 species they are nearly everywhere thriving. This is the story of solenopsis Invicta for 80 years it has been on a ceaseless march across the United States racking up six billion dollars every year in crop damage equipment repair and Pest Control conquering 340 million acres in 13 states and it’s still on the Move globally now scientists are cracking their ancient secrets to success and survival we knew that we could speculate all day but to fully understand the ants we decided to bring them into the lab and obtain visual data.
Viced Rhino is an atheist YouTuber who mostly does debunking of Christian apologist. But as a father of three children including one out lesbian teenager, he has covered a lot of the anti-LGBTQIA stuff. He has compiled a pretty great list of studies and medical information. He broke it out into categories. I love it as it is easy to use and all the material to respond to anti-trans haters is in one neatly organized place. Hugs
I keep hearing the anti-trans crowd scream about how so many people who have transitioned regret it. They constantly push that trans men who have mastectomies, removing their breasts then wish they had not done so. In fact, that myth is used to push anti-transitioning care laws. Even in the comments I have some who ask about the ones who have their breast removed as if it is a large and growing number. This is a new study, peer reviewed, done by medical professionals. It debunks that myth and shows it for the made up lie it is. I will post the entire thing, it is short but rather hard to read with all the numbers they throw in. But I will put the conclusion right at the top in bold red. It shows that the 1% regret rate is true. That means for every 100 people who female to male and have their breasts removed, 99 are happy and doing better. Only one person had regrets, and in truth they can get fake breasts implanted if they are that unhappy. Again for the sake of that one person the anti-trans people want to stop the good outcomes for the other 99 people. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Hugs
Conclusions and relevance:In this cross-sectional survey study, the results of validated survey instruments indicated low rates of decisional regret and high levels of satisfaction with decision following gender-affirming mastectomy. The lack of dissatisfaction and regret impeded the ability to perform a more complex statistical analysis, highlighting the need for condition-specific instruments to assess decisional regret and satisfaction with decision following gender-affirming surgery.
Long-Term Regret and Satisfaction With Decision Following Gender-Affirming Mastectomy
Importance: There has been increasing legislative interest in regulating gender-affirming surgery, in part due to the concern about decisional regret. The regret rate following gender-affirming surgery is thought to be approximately 1%; however, previous studies relied heavily on ad hoc instruments.
Objective: To evaluate long-term decisional regret and satisfaction with decision using validated instruments following gender-affirming mastectomy.
Design, setting, and participants: For this cross-sectional study, a survey of patient-reported outcomes was sent between February 1 and July 31, 2022, to patients who had undergone gender-affirming mastectomy at a US tertiary referral center between January 1, 1990, and February 29, 2020.
Exposure: Decisional regret and satisfaction with decision to undergo gender-affirming mastectomy.
Main outcomes and measures: Long-term patient-reported outcomes, including the Holmes-Rovner Satisfaction With Decision scale, the Decision Regret Scale, and demographic characteristics, were collected. Additional information was collected via medical record review. Descriptive statistics and univariable analysis using Fisher exact and Wilcoxon rank sum tests were performed to compare responders and nonresponders.
Results: A total of 235 patients were deemed eligible for the study, and 139 responded (59.1% response rate). Median age at the time of surgery was 27.1 (IQR, 23.0-33.4) years for responders and 26.4 (IQR, 23.1-32.7) years for nonresponders. Nonresponders (n = 96) had a longer postoperative follow-up period than responders (median follow-up, 4.6 [IQR, 3.1-8.6] vs 3.6 [IQR, 2.7-5.3] years, respectively; P = .002). Nonresponders vs responders also had lower rates of depression (42 [44%] vs 94 [68%]; P < .001) and anxiety (42 [44%] vs 97 [70%]; P < .001). No responders or nonresponders requested or underwent a reversal procedure. The median Satisfaction With Decision Scale score was 5.0 (IQR, 5.0-5.0) on a 5-point scale, with higher scores noting higher satisfaction. The median Decision Regret Scale score was 0.0 (IQR, 0.0-0.0) on a 100-point scale, with lower scores noting lower levels of regret. A univariable regression analysis could not be performed to identify characteristics associated with low satisfaction with decision or high decisional regret due to the lack of variation in these responses.
Conclusions and relevance: In this cross-sectional survey study, the results of validated survey instruments indicated low rates of decisional regret and high levels of satisfaction with decision following gender-affirming mastectomy. The lack of dissatisfaction and regret impeded the ability to perform a more complex statistical analysis, highlighting the need for condition-specific instruments to assess decisional regret and satisfaction with decision following gender-affirming surgery.
Conflict of interest statement
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Ms Bruce and Dr Morrison reported receiving grants from The Plastic Surgery Foundation during the conduct of the study. Dr Lane reported receiving salary support via an F32 training grant (F32HS028748-01) from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.
I recently wrote a letter to Jill about what had happened to me health wise, as best as I know. She gave me permission to use it here for everyone so I don’t have to retype it all. As you will see at the end of the email typing can be a problem for me some days. Some days are much better than others, but I have terrible neuropathy, muscle spasms, and arthritis. I did edit for clarity, spelling mistakes, and to remove stuff that was for Jill alone. Hugs
In January my primary care doctor took me off my heart medication controlling my heart rate so I could have my needed allergy shots. I shouldn’t have been on it even though I needed it because I have life-threatening allergies that require me to have / use an EpiPen and the heart rate drug interferes with that working when needed.
So I was taken off the med and my heart rate soared far more than it was thought it would and stayed there. I was in the 130s and 140s bpm, with spikes much higher. Before the med it was high but not so high. The high heart rate caused me not to be able to breathe. I struggled to get air in and after three or four weeks as things got worse I suffered what my doctors now think was a TIA or mini stroke. I suddenly struggled to speak, I could hear words but when I went to respond the words in my mind wouldn’t come out or I couldn’t find the word I wanted to use. What came out of my mouth was mangled or totally a different word. Now I normally mispronounce some words to be funny. Like saying elephants as efahlants or some other word to be funny. But this was seriously differently. I couldn’t pronounce words. Plus, my mind was full of fuzz, I struggled to think. I couldn’t read stuff on the screens of my computers and couldn’t respond at all. If I tried to reply, what I typed was like a third grader and sometimes made no sense to me at all. Ron was desperately trying to help me but everything was wrong, I couldn’t talk to him to explain what was going on with me and I would get so upset, but Ron has over 16 years in various ICUs and realized what was wrong was some kind of stroke caused by a nearly constant heart rate over 135 and most of the time over 140 and struggling to breath.
But in the land of medical treatment for profit, I couldn’t get even a call back from my former heart doctor’s office. Side note, they called me back in late May after I have seen a heart doctor from a different group and then in June to ask me to schedule my appointment. So by mid-March Ron had had enough and raised hell with my primary and they got me an appointment with a heart doctor taking patients. That doctor looked at the heart rate and blood pressure readings telling me this was serious. Remember, I was still struggling to talk. As I already was unsteady on my feet and walked with a cane or walker, no one even took that into account.
So that doctor had me go through a nuclear heart scan that allowed them to do a stress test without me being on a treadmill. They also did echo scans of my heart. During the test my sugar crashed, and also when they put the medication in to raise the heart rate I suddenly had trouble breathing. My blood pressure readings were so far off the scale the nurse disregarded them and put in her own idea of what they might be by manually taking my vitals, but her monitor on the cuff was not working to her satisfaction so she put in numbers she felt were more appropriate. They were made up as she recorded my diastolic as 40. That is seriously out of acceptable range.
The determination was my heart was OK, good looking even with some recent damage and the doctor tried several drugs and got my blood pressure and heart rate down to an acceptable range. The determination was that in his opinion after what every happen to me my continued breathing problems were making my heart react. Basically, he passed the buck.
So back to the allergist that started this so I could have my treatments. He started them and I started to feel better almost right a way within a few weeks on that side, but he did a breathing test, and my breathing was very bad. He had me do an x-ray and ordered a pulmonary test also gave me a referral to a pulmonologist in the hospital system he worked for. But before I called to set up a new patient appointment, the hospital called me to tell me the test would cost me over $300 dollars for a half hours test. I can not afford that. They told me it was so expensive because it was being done in a hospital. So I did not call the pulmonologist and I am waiting to see the allergist again to ask what to do. I still have breathing problems, but they are not as bad as they were but if I get excited and try to talk I struggle to breath and when I come back to bed from the many times I have to pee at night when I first lay down I struggle to draw in air.
But the important thing is the fog in my brain is clearing up. I still sometimes struggle but when this happened I simply had a head full of cotton, full of fog. I couldn’t understand what I was trying to read, and there was simply no way to comment. I would get so frustrated and angry. But months passed before I could visit other blogs or even deal with any comments. That let some haters who did not understand my repeated pleas to give me space to write horrible stuff in the comments. I could hardly post videos I was trying to watch and laying in bed posting email links to stories from my devices.
I am not fully recovered, and my doctors think the way I am is as good as it is going to get for me. I still get so frustrated, when tired I still struggle to understand and respond to things. Sometimes I struggle to find words I want to speak and other words come out like before, mangled. While Ron understands it is horrible when on the phone. When I type sometimes, I read it afterward and it is gibberish. Yet I must accept this and move on. But it still is frustrating.
My muscles spasms are so bad that as I was typing this email I was jerking and hitting random keys.
