Profils cliniques et prise en charge des enfants et adolescents transgenres dans une consultation spécialisée d’Île-de-France

Abstract

Context

French clinical data on the medical management of transgender children and adolescents are scarce. Yet, the topic regularly comes to the forefront of the media.

Method

In this article, we propose to retrospectively describe all the children and adolescents received since 2012 in the largest specialized gender identity consultation for children and adolescents in Île-de-France. In addition to their sociodemographic characteristics, we study the presence or not of gender incongruence according to the ICD 11 criteria, the psychiatric and social vulnerabilities, and describe the main management modalities proposed: social transition, puberty blockage, hormonal transitions and/or rare surgical transitions. These last three proposals were discussed in multidisciplinary concertation meetings.

Results

We collected 239 youths aged 3 to 20 years. The mean age at which youth and their families were seen at the first appointment was 14.5 years (± 3.16). In all, 91% of the sample had gender incongruence, with 32% expressing gender incongruence before puberty. Two-thirds were youth assigned female at birth (P < 0.05). In terms of psychopathology, depressive and anxiety disorders, as well as suicidality, came well ahead of other psychiatric co-occurrences. School ostracism and rejection were common. Compared to the general adolescent population, the young people in the specialized consultation are much more exposed to discrimination and insults, and even sexual aggression in the public space, than their peers, and the internalization of transphobia by these young people is particularly important. In all, 40% of the young people made a social transition before the first consultation and 74% and 61% of them did so within the family and at school (the average age of social transition at school = 15.13 years). In all, 35% of the young people made the name change official at the town hall (the average age = 16.26 years). Puberty blockers were used by 11% of the youths who had reached puberty (mean age = 13.9 years, mean time to initiation = 10 months). In total, fewer than half of the youths (44%) received masculinizing or feminizing sex hormone treatment (mean age = 16.9 years, mean time to initiation = 14 months). In all, 8.7% of the young people who received sex hormone treatment underwent fertility preservation. Requests for surgery before the age of 18 remain very rare. The most frequent are torsoplasties (20%) performed at a mean age of 18.44 years and never before 16 years.

Conclusion

The results of this cohort are close to those reported by other European centers in terms of the higher proportion of young people assigned female at birth. However, they differ with a lower proportion of hormonal treatment. Social transition is the most frequent request in our center, but it is not systematic. We wonder whether the place of narration while in our care may explain these differences.