Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Is a Temporary Diagnosis for Most Teens

 It is widely recognized that most children with gender dysphoria (GD) will come to terms with their sex and not live as transgender adults. Transition advocates contend, however, that administering irreversible endocrine and surgical interventions to adolescents is not a problem because, unlike childhood-onset GD, adolescent GD almost never remits.

This view is encapsulated in a quote from Stephen Rosenthal, a notable U.S. gender physician, in an article for Nature Reviews Endocrinology, one of the highest-ranked peer-reviewed medical journals: “Longitudinal studies have indicated that the emergence or worsening of gender dysphoria with pubertal onset is associated with a very high likelihood of being a transgender adult. This observation is central to the rationale for medical intervention in eligible transgender adolescents” (emphasis added).  

Like many assertions in youth gender medicine, the claim about the near-permanence of adolescent gender dysphoria (GD) has never been properly tested. (How these studies are designed makes them incapable of answering this question, which is probably why Rosenthal uses the vague word “indicate[s].”) So we decided to test it ourselves. Our findings, from an ongoing Manhattan Institute analysis of an all-payer, all-claims national insurance database, challenge this “central” belief underpinning youth gender medicine. In fact, the rate of persistence of the gender dysphoria diagnosis for youth over seven years is 42.2 percent to 49.9 percent, with the trend line suggesting likely future declines.  

Our findings are highly significant for the debate over youth gender medicine. Treatments with permanent effects, and that include negative impacts on health and functioning, should not be offered to patients—especially not minors—with a diagnosis likely to disappear after a few years.

Like our prior analysis of the number of mastectomies performed on minors, this analysis is based on a comprehensive database of insurance health claims in the United States containing health-care encounter data for about 85 percent of the insured U.S. population. Since American insurance rates are high (about 90 percent of the U.S. population overall, and 95 percent of children, are insured), this is probably one of the most comprehensive resources for health care-related inquires.

In the first part of our analysis, we estimated the number of U.S. minors (age 17.5 and younger) who have had a gender-related diagnosis between 2017 and 2023. Our data show between 272,181 and 342,476 such cases. The smaller number in this range comes from only using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnostic category F64, which captures the diagnoses of “gender identity disorders” (see Table 1a below). F64 is also used to capture “gender dysphoria” and “gender incongruence.” For simplicity, we will refer to this group as the “GD” group. The bigger number comes from adding two more ICD diagnoses commonly used to signal gender-related concerns: E34.9 (“endocrine disorder, unspecified”) and Z87.890 (“personal history of sex reassignment”). For simplicity, we will refer to this group as “GD+”. Further accounting for the estimated 15 percent missing claims in our database, we get a range of roughly 320,000 to 400,000 minors who were diagnosed with GD/GD+ at some point between 2017–2023.

Table 1a: F64 “gender identity disorder” diagnosis for youth (<18 years)

	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023*	Total***
F640 – Transsexualism	16,740	21,112	27,902	32,479	42,771	47,160	39,318	143,905
F649 – Gender identity disorder, unspecified	8,166	13,143	21,038	26,595	43,541	49,330	43,913	138,627
F642 – Gender identity disorder of childhood	7,303	8,621	11,095	13,259	21,708	23,694	18,183	68,079
F641 – Dual role transvestism	7,343	6,363	6,911	6,528	7,005	6,887	4,454	31,942
F648 – Other gender identity disorders	1,141	1,477	2,055	2,193	4,349	5,205	4,156	15,844
F64 – MISSING DESC	19	14	25	427	306	108	41	850
Total	31,420	38,952	51,850	61,327	90,818	101,615	87,470**	272,181

Table 1b: F64 “gender identity disorder” and related diagnoses (GD+) for youth (<18 years)

	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023*	Total***
F640 - Transsexualism	16,740	21,112	27,902	32,479	42,771	47,160	39,318	143,905
F649 - Gender identity disorder, unspecified	8,166	13,143	21,038	26,595	43,541	49,330	43,913	138,627
E349 - Endocrine disorder, unspecified	16,326	15,192	16,323	16,037	19,587	20,920	16,639	95,069
F642 - Gender identity disorder of childhood	7,303	8,621	11,095	13,259	21,708	23,694	18,183	68,079
F641 - Dual role transvestism	7,343	6,363	6,911	6,528	7,005	6,887	4,454	31,942
F648 - Other gender identity disorders	1,141	1,477	2,055	2,193	4,349	5,205	4,156	15,844
Z87890 - Personal history of sex reassignment	703	714	888	828	1,068	1,134	787	5,316
F64 - MISSING DESC	19	14	25	427	306	108	41	850
Total	44,930	50,700	63,672	72,601	104,190	115,270	99,005 **	342,476

*The 2023 data contain around 90 percent of total expected claim volume for that year due to the known issue of “claim runout”—claims for services incurred at the end of the calendar year are not always submitted in a timely manner, leading to an undercounting of such claims. However, since patients with GD have, on average, four-five diagnoses per year, while 2023 may represent a slight undercount, it is much likely to be less than 10 percent, as most patients would have already presented with the diagnoses earlier in the year and would have been captured in our data.

**It appears that the number of GD-related diagnoses in 2023 have dropped substantially. We are undertaking a separate analysis of this preliminary finding. Our current analysis suggests that though states that imposed age limits on medical transition had the highest drops in the diagnosed prevalence of GD, all the states, including those that became “sanctuary” states for minor transition, seem to have experienced notable declines in 2023.

*** The numbers in the year columns represent the diagnostic prevalence (unique count of patients with the diagnosis) for that year. The number in the “Total” column is the total number of unique patients for each diagnosis for the years 2017 to 2023. The number in the “Total” column is thus less than the sum of the individual columns.

Having established the size of the population of youth with GD and GD+ in our dataset to be between 272,181 (320,000) and 342,476 (400,000) cases, we focused next on the key question: What is the evidence that gender dysphoria in adolescents is so persistent as to be regarded in clinical settings as permanent? A high rate of persistence would suggest that adolescents with GD are, in fact, “transgender adolescents,” meaning they will go on to live their lives as adults who feel severe discomfort with their sex.

To estimate the diagnostic persistence rate of GD, we created a baseline cohort of minors who had the diagnosis of GD (“F64”) in 2017 and who were continuously present in the dataset for the entire seven years through 2023, as evidenced by medical professionals billing for any health-care service for each of these patients, in every year. We then estimated the persistence of the diagnosis using various scenarios in order to test the robustness of our findings.

*GD consists of all F64 codes

 **Related diagnoses (GD+) consist of all F64 (gender identity disorders) codes, as well as F651 (transvestic fetishism); E34.9 (endocrine disorder, unspecified); Z87.890 (personal history of sex reassignment); and Z90.970 (acquired absence of other genital organ(s))

Table 2a: persistence of GD and GD+ in minors over 7 years, cohort-based analysis, unique patients

	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
7.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD+ at follow-up	9144	6315	5703	5324	5049	4726	4066
7.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD only at follow-up	9144	6192	5541	5139	4855	4491	3856
12.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD+ at follow-up	6616	4690	4264	3997	3774	3537	3058
12.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD only at follow-up	6616	4585	4126	3836	3606	3348	2891
12.5–17.5-year-olds, 2 diagnoses of GD (GD and GD+ at baseline in 180 days), GD+ at follow-up	4800	3915	3449	3149	2975	2759	2395

Table 2b: persistence of GD and GD+ in minors over 7 years, cohort-based analysis,  percent

	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
7.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD+ at follow-up	100 percent	69.1 percent	62.4 percent	58.2 percent	55.2 percent	51.7 percent	44.5 percent
7.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD only at follow-up	100 percent	67.7 percent	60.6 percent	56.2 percent	53.1 percent	49.1 percent	42.2 percent
12.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD+ at follow-up	100 percent	70.9 percent	64.4 percent	60.4 percent	57.0 percent	53.5 percent	46.2 percent
12.5–17.5-year-olds, GD at baseline, GD only at follow-up	100 percent	69.3 percent	62.4 percent	58.0 percent	54.5 percent	50.6 percent	43.7 percent
12.5–17.5-year-olds, 2 diagnoses of GD (GD and GD+ at baseline in 180 days), GD+ at follow-up	100 percent	81.6 percent	71.9 percent	65.6 percent	62.0 percent	57.5 percent	49.9 percent

For the lower end of the estimate, we coded individuals as diagnostically persistent only if they had an F64 (“gender identity disorders”) claim in the follow-up period (in addition to baseline). We recorded this as “GD.” For the upper range of the estimate of persistence, we allowed for any GD-related claim (F64, F651, Z87.890, Z90.79, E34.9) to be counted as “persistence” (but only F64 at baseline). We recorded this as “GD+.”

For HIPAA reasons, the data use agreement allowed us to conduct analysis based on five-year brackets, which limited our analysis for youth to 7.5–12.5-year-olds and 12.5–17.5-year-olds. We analyzed the entire 7.5–17.5 cohort of youth, but we also ran a separate analysis for the 12.5–17.5 subgroup. Our rationale was that while eight- and nine-year-olds could be candidates for hormonal suppression under the current protocols, the 12.5+ group is much more likely to be treated medically, and they may also have a different diagnostic-persistence rate. Our criteria produced 9,144 unique patients at baseline for the 7.5-to-17.5-year-old cohort and 6,616 for the 12.5-to-17.5-year-old cohort. Both denominators are sufficiently large to analyze diagnostic persistence.

Our analysis found that in the 12.5–17.5 age category, 43.7 percent–46.2 percent of those who had a GD diagnosis in 2017 retained a gender-related diagnosis by 2023. In the combined 7.5–17.5 age groups category, the diagnostic persistence rate was slightly lower, at 42.2 percent–44.5 percent.

As the diagnostic-persistence chart shows, across all age groups, there was a steeper drop-off between the first and second years (2017 to 2018) as compared with subsequent years. We considered different explanations for this. We ran several other analyses, starting our cohorts at other years, and continued to observe the effect of having a sharper drop-off after year one, with a flatter but ongoing reduction in subsequent years. 

To account for the possibility of false positive diagnoses in the baseline year, we ran another analysis, this time requiring that the baseline cohort have at least two gender-related claims (one F64, and the other F64 or other GD-related codes) within a six-month period. Applying this approach to the older adolescent group of 12.5-to-17.5-year-olds, we saw that the diagnostic persistence rate over seven years rose only slightly, to 49.9 percent.

Finally, we ran a sub-analysis which ensured that the patients in the initial cohort were diagnosed with GD for the first time in 2018 and had no prior GD diagnosis in 2017. This truncated our follow-up period to six years (2018–2023) and resulted in even lower persistence rates (around 40 percent) in just six rather than seven years. Incidentally, this sub-analysis also resulted in a drop-off after the first year that was less sharp than in the main analysis, but still sharper than in subsequent years. These interesting findings may reflect a more robust way to analyze the data and are worth exploring further.

So, what is the takeaway from this analysis? The single biggest observation is that, contrary to what has been asserted by advocates of youth transition, most adolescents with a GD diagnosis will not have this diagnosis within as few as seven years, during the period of rapid identity development. The single most important implication is that there is no empirical basis for assuming that most adolescents presenting with GD are destined to live as gender-transitioned adults. This further suggests that the GD diagnosis presents a dubious basis for offering teens life-altering interventions with permanent impacts on health and functioning.

One should consider alternative interpretations of our findings, which are preliminary and conservative, and for which we welcome feedback. First, perhaps non-accepting parents are not allowing young people to seek medical services related to their gender distress after an initial health-care encounter, and these minors delay transition until adulthood as a result. The problem with this explanation is that, by the end of our analysis, more than half of the original cohort—5,962 out of 9,144 individuals—were nearly 18 or older, with the oldest participants approaching 25. 

Another alternative explanation is that young people are getting their gender-related treatments without insurance (e.g., buying hormones off the street or paying out of pocket). This is possible, especially if an individual’s insurance carrier does not cover transition-related procedures. However, it is unlikely to explain the full extent of the drop, especially since insurers tend to cover gender-transition treatments and online providers tend not to serve patients under 18.

Further, even when age-restriction laws were enacted in some states in 2023, services related to GD treatment such as blood work or psychological care remained legal in these states and would presumably still be covered by insurance. Since these services would likely be billed with the GD diagnosis, the diagnosis would have shown up in the data. From an insurance perspective, the absence of a GD-related diagnosis on insurance claims is a reliable (if not perfect) proxy for non-pursuit of medical interventions related to GD, including medical gender transition.

A third possibility (though not technically an alternative explanation) is that some continue to identify as transgender but stop the pursuit of medical interventions of any kind, including therapy, related to their identification. This is indeed possible: young gender dysphoric people may not pursue medicalization for several reasons, including shifting identities and shifting “embodiment goals.” Notably, however, this explanation does not help those making the case for using an adolescent GD diagnosis as a basis for medical interventions with lifelong impacts on health and functioning.

Our data analysis has several limitations. First, given when we acquired our database, the 2023 data have about 90 percent of the total expected claims for the year. However, we think this has a limited impact on our analysis of diagnostic persistence, since most patients with claims related to GD have four to five or more such claims per year, according to our data. It is possible that with more complete data, the 2023 numbers would increase. Yet even if we inflate our current 2023 patient count by 10 percent, 2023 is still on track to show a decline in diagnostic prevalence, relative to 2022.

Another limitation is the inability to account for data from Kaiser Permanente, which are absent from our database because Kaiser’s is a closed billing system. Kaiser is a Top Five insurer, with a market share of about 7 percent. It may thus capture around 7 percent of transitioning youth. If the persistence rates of Kaiser patients are different, we are unable to account for it.

To summarize our key findings, the number of young people who have received a GD diagnosis in recent years is much higher than previously reported. By our conservative estimate, over 300,000 minors in the U.S. had a GD diagnosis between 2017 and 2023, which means that the condition is not rare. Even more important is that among adolescents with a GD diagnosis in 2017, over half lost their gender-related diagnoses by 2023, with future ongoing declines likely, as suggested by the trend. There is also some evidence of a sharper than usual 2023 decline, though future data would need to confirm this trend.

We are not the first to present findings that challenge the conventional wisdom among gender clinicians on the persistence of adolescent GD. A recent study from the Netherlands on “gender non-contentedness” (“unhappiness with being the gender aligned with one’s sex”) found that unhappiness with gender plummeted from 11 percent among young adolescents to 4 percent 14 years later. A German study published earlier this year and using national insurance data reported that over 60 percent of young people diagnosed with GD no longer had that diagnosis five years later. Almost three-quarters of adolescent girls aged 15 to 19—the prime demographic of rapid-onset gender dysphoria—lost their diagnosis. According to the German researchers, this means that gender dysphoria has “low diagnostic persistence.” Another data analysis, combining U.S. and other countries’ data, showed similar trends, concluding that “GD is not a permanent diagnosis.” A landmark 2022 U.S. study of military health-care records found that one quarter of adolescents who started on hormones discontinued their treatment at the four-year mark.

Doubts about the predictive value of a GD diagnosis even following comprehensive assessment also inform the Cass Review. “Although a diagnosis of gender dysphoria has been seen as necessary for initiating medical treatment,” physician Hilary Cass writes in her report to the National Health Service of England, “it is not reliably predictive of whether that young person will have longstanding gender incongruence in the future, or whether medical intervention will be the best option for them.” The Cass Review’s conclusions were informed by seven new systematic reviews of evidence, including one on care pathways.

In sum, while our analysis is the first comprehensive effort to track diagnostic persistence of GD in the U.S., our findings add to a growing international body of evidence that adolescent GD is not a permanent condition and that, given the stakes, it is irresponsible to view adolescents with GD as “transgender adolescents.”

Leor Sapir is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/adolescent-gender-dysphoria-is-a-temporary-diagnosis-for-most-teens