Obviously I'm about to wade into something deeply controversial, but I actually have a very serious but macabre question:
Is anyone carefully tracking rates of depression, drug use, and suicide among this group right now, such that we could eventually determine whether or not the focus on "affirmation" of gender dysphoria is actually helping, rather than resulting in more confusion, worsening the affect of identity disorders, and contributing to more suicide rates?
It's my understanding that the current data does not show much (if any) positive emotional health benefit to gender affirming surgeries, and that depression and suicide rates among people who have had such surgeries remain very high compared to the general population.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016885
But that was also mostly before there was such a huge cultural push on social media for people to make irreversible decisions about their bodies at very young ages (ie. 13-14).
It doesn't really seem wise to have kids and young teens undergoing hormone treatments and surgeries that can never really be undone unless we were absolutely certain that it was going to result in less overall psychological torment instead of potentially more... and yet we seem to be running full-speed down that road right now.
