Treating Transgender Children and Adolescents

Extremely gender variant children and adolescents (minors), increasingly referred to as 'trans' or 'transgender children,' are small in number. In recent years, their situation has become highly sensationalized, whilst the matter of how to best treat them remains an area of controversy. A growing body of research supports emerging treatment approaches, but more research is still needed to answer a host of questions: Do trans minors have a psychiatric disorder or a normal variation of gender presentation? Should treatment be aimed at helping them accept the bodies into which they were born or should parents, clinicians and schools accommodate their wishes of transition? At what age should transition begin? What are the implications - physical, psychological, social and ethical - of various treatment approaches? The first part of this volume explores different clinical approaches to transgender minors in the USA and abroad. The second part contains responses to these approaches by commentators from various fields including biology, child psychiatry, civil rights activism, ethics, law, gender studies, queer theory and psychoanalysis. The work will be an invaluable source for parents and families looking at how to proceed with a trans child, as well as clinicians seeking to make appropriate referrals. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality.

Jack Drescher, MD, is Clinical Associate Professor at New York Medical College, USA. He is President of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry and a member of DSM-5 Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, and the WHO Working Group on (ICD) Classification of Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health. Previous publications include Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (1998). He is Emeritus Editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health. William Byne, MD, PhD is Associate Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, USA. He is Director of the Laboratory of Neuroanatomy and Morphometrics, and Chair of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Treatment of Gender Identity Disorder.

1. Introduction: The Treatment of Gender Dysphoric/Gender Variant Children and Adolescents Jack Drescher and William Byne Part I: Clinical Approaches 2. Clinical Management of Gender Dysphoria in Children and Adolescents: The Dutch Approach Annelou L. C. de Vries and Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis 3. Psychological Evaluation and Medical Treatment of Transgender Youth in an Interdisciplinary "Gender Management Service" (GeMS) in a Major Pediatric Center Laura Edwards-Leeper and Norman P. Spack 4. From Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Identity Creativity: True Gender Self Child Therapy Diane Ehrensaft 5. A Comprehensive Program for Children with Gender Variant Behaviors and Gender Identity Disorders Edgardo Menvielle 6. A Developmental, Biopsychosocial Model for the Treatment of Children with Gender Identity Disorder Kenneth J. Zucker, Hayley Wood, Devita Singh, and Susan J. Bradley Part II: Responses 7. The Dynamic Development of Gender Variability Anne Fausto-Sterling 8. Supporting Transgender Children: New Legal, Social, and Medical Approaches Shannon Price Minter 9. Thoughts on the Nature of Identity: How Disorders of Sex Development Inform Clinical Research about Gender Identity Disorders William G. Reiner and D. Townsend Reiner 10. Apples to Committee Consensus: The Challenge of Gender Identity Classification David C. Rettew 11. Listening to Children Imagining Gender: Observing the Inflation of an Idea David Schwartz 12. Commentary on the Treatment of Gender Variant and Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents: Common Themes and Ethical Reflections Edward Stein 13. Gender Dysphoric/Gender Variant (GD/GV) Children and Adolescents: Summarizing What We Know and What We Have Yet to Learn Jack Drescher and William Byne