The discourse about gender dysphoria can become very toxic, very quickly. Stuck in the middle of this, however, are some of our most vulnerable young people. Following last year’s Cass Review, Dr Stephanie Thornton considers what to do for the best welfare of children with GD
Urgent need: Whatever one’s attitude to gender dysphoria, children affected are in urgent need of support as more than 50% have high levels of depression and self-harm - Adobe Stock

How to respond, when a child says they are in the wrong gender body? Such gender dysphoria (GD) is becoming more common across the world. In the UK, the incidence of children under 18 making this complaint rose over 30-fold between 2011 and 2021 (Jarvis et al, 2025), most markedly in children assigned female at birth. And whatever sex at birth, GD begins in early childhood: in nearly 80% of cases, it is the child’s earliest memory and is an established conviction by six years of age (Zaliznyak et al, 2021).

GD is a controversial topic. Some simply deny its reality, attributing it to psycho-social factors or “woke” agendas. Others are more accepting, noting that it is the lived experience of many, and it is not a new phenomenon – for example, the Hijras have been accepted as a third gender, neither completely male nor female, generally effectively “trans”, throughout the Indian subcontinent for more than 800 years).

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