Report: Therapy Is Often Successful at Treating Gender Dysphoria

Transgender activists repeatedly assert that the only way to help someone who experiences gender dysphoria (meaning a person feels they are the opposite sex) is for that person to medically “transition.”

Therapeutic efforts with a counselor or psychologist to help someone overcome his or her gender dysphoria are today classified under the umbrella of “conversion therapy” and are widely denounced as evil and abusive. For instance, the Human Rights Campaign describes conversion therapy as “a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.”

Mainstream news outlets also uphold the position that psychotherapeutic efforts to help a person accept his or her biological sex are wrong. The New York Timestax-payer funded NPR, and NBC News all uphold the Human Rights Campaign’s line and refer to conversion therapy a “discredited practice” that aims to change ​​sexual orientation or gender identity.

Despite claims that it has been discredited, there has been no systematic study on the effectiveness of psychological therapy for treating gender dysphoria.

Twenty-four states have ignored this lack of data and have banned using “conversion therapy” to help someone accept his or her biological sex. This includes CaliforniaHawaiiIllinoisMaine, and Utah. Minnesota became the 24th state just last week. This means that it is illegal for a psychologist to help a person overcome his or her gender dysphoria.

A report published this week by the American College of Pediatricians, a conservative pediatric group, cuts against the belief that it is impossible for people who believe they are the opposite sex to overcome their gender dysphoria.

The report examined studies that looked at psychotherapeutic or behavioral approaches for treating gender dysphoria and found that these methods were often successful in alleviating a person’s identification with the opposite sex.

While the report found that there are no rigorous studies examining the effectiveness of psychotherapy for treating gender dysphoria, it was able to conclude that therapy with a counselor often, but not always, resulted in a person accepting his or her biological sex in the studies that are currently available.

“There is compelling evidence to suggest that psychotherapy may be efficacious in treating gender dysphoria,” the report concludes.

Of the 103 people for which the report found a definitive result regarding whether they accepted their biological sex or transitioned, 76 came to accept their biological sex after therapy and 27 medically transitioned. The report did not include pre-adolescent children.

The report is not a systematic look at the effectiveness of psychotherapy for treating gender dysphoria, and the studies were conducted in different settings. Again, there is no rigorous study available that finds how effective psychotherapy is at treating gender dysphoria. Rather, this report is a narrative look at available cases and can only provide evidence to suggest that the mainstream position that it is impossible for psychological therapy to treat gender dysphoria is not true.

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