Study: puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones increases suicide risk in youth

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Puberty Blockers, Cross-Sex Hormones, and Youth Suicide

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SUMMARYLowering legal barriers to make it easier for minors to undergo cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent does not reduce suicide rates—in fact, it likely leads to higher rates of suicide among young people in states that adopt these changes. States should instead adopt parental bills of rights that affirm the fact that parents have primary responsibility for their children’s education and health, and that require school officials and health professionals to receive permission from parents before administering health services, including medication and “gender-affirming” counseling, to children under 18. States should also tighten the criteria for receiving cross-sex treatments, including raising the minimum eligibility age.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. U.S. policymakers are seeking to make it easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones based on the claim that doing so reduces suicide risk.

2. Studies finding that “gender-affirming” interventions prevent suicide fail to show a causal relationship and have been poorly executed.

3. A superior research design shows that easing access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by minors without parental consent increases suicide rates.

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The danger of adolescents committing suicide if they do not receive these medical interventions is thought to be so urgent that the Biden Administration recently issued a statement “confirming the positive impact of gender affirming care on youth mental health,” while referencing “the evidence behind the positive effects of gender affirming care.”

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In the past several years, the suicide rate among those ages 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such a provision. Before 2010, these two groups of states did not differ in their youth suicide rates. Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available, elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions became observable.

Rather than being protective against suicide, this pattern indicates that easier access by minors to cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent is associated with higher risk of suicide.

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