A large, peer-reviewed study published Friday in JAMA Network Open found that transgender youths prescribed puberty blockers had significantly lower adjusted odds of diagnosed mood disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors than transgender youths who did not receive the medications, adding new evidence to one of the most politically contentious areas of pediatric medicine.
The nationwide retrospective cohort study examined insurance claims data from more than 231,000 youths between 2016 and 2025, comparing transgender and cisgender youths who either did or did not receive puberty blockers.
ITS NICE TO HAVE CONFIRMATION OF THIS BUT WHY ARE WE YELLING?
Your link is broken, here’s working one:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2851743
Importantly, puberty blocker prescription was associated with lower odds of mood disorder and suicidality diagnoses, but only among transgender youths. While this result should be studied further and interpreted with caution, it aligns with prior literature10,32,33 and clinical insights.34-36 More research is necessary to determine the mechanisms behind this association; although puberty blocker prescription appeared to attenuate both outcomes, it was not alone associated with diagnostic odds for transgender youths reduced to levels observed among their cisgender peers. Due to limitations of the administrative claims database being analyzed, we could not adjust for factors like psychosocial support, and policy environment measures (eg, regional and national transgender equality) did not appear to be associated with outcomes, although this may reflect measurement error (eg, scores were not available for the full study period or inconsistently measured from year to year).
No causal link demonstrated, potentially affected by other factors like how supportive your environment is.
I’m not sure how you could possibly isolate being allowed puberty blockers as a child from your family being supportive. It seems like one follows the other, since every (supported) trans child I know of is on track to eventually receive hormones or has already received them, because it’s generally the standard of care if treatment is sought prior to puberty and cross-sex hormones are desired and considered appropriate in the future. Unsupported trans kids don’t get treatment.
The overwhelming majority of the literature in the last 30-ish years have reached similar conclusions, we just don’t know why yet. The important part is to support trans kids, though. It has been shown to produce the best outcomes.
Without a causal link shown it’s just peer reviewed correlation. Yes, there are things to suggest it helps with mental health outcomes but as the paper says directly, this is not a proof and there are other factors at play.
I’m not a fan of scientific studies where correlation is all they can come up with. If correlation alone was what we went by then scientists could propose public policies to reintroduce maritime piracy to decrease global warming - they’re inversely correlated after all.
I’m not a fan of correlation is all they can come with up either, but if there’s strong correlation for nearly a century (the first studies on cross-sex hormones in adults are quite old) that transition and family/peer support helps reduce depression and suicidality, I’m inclined to at least be supportive.
With children, it’s even easier for me in particular to lend my support because the data are still strongly in favour of support even if the kid grows out of it later and blockers are largely reversible with few side effects. But as you say, we need to continue to monitor the literature to see how our understanding of the situation changes as we learn more.
Cis kids with precocious puberty may not be the control group they think they are. My only concern is that this could be used to gatekeep puberty blockers by scaremongering, putting the onus on kids to somehow prove they’re trans. I realise giving puberty blockers to prepubescent cis kids instead is probably massively unethical, but
Wow, not forcing bodily changes on people who have said that they don’t want those changes leads to better mental health! Who would’ve guessed??!
They’ll just dismiss this the same way they do with every mental health association study, it’s not placebo controlled.
Same thing they did with psychedelic studies, then when they did placebo controlled studies they claimed those weren’t valid because the rather obvious side effects make blinding both pointless and impossible.
