A 70% increase in cases of gender dysphoria - those who openly identify as a different gender other than the one they were born with - from 2020 to 2021, according to a study based on the medical records of 330 million Americans and conducted by Komodo Health Inc and Reuters. By 2021, approximately 42,000 children and adolescents across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children aged between 6 and 17 years, were diagnosed with gender dysphoria between 2017 and 2021. Reuters found similar trends when it requested state-level data on diagnoses among children covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for low-income families.
Influence on transgender identities.
At least 14,726 minors began hormone treatment with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria from 2017 to 2021, according to Komodo's analysis. Of this number 4,780 patients had specifically initiated puberty blockers.
By suppressing sex hormones, puberty-blocking drugs stop the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics, in the case of women the development of breasts and menstruation is stopped. Medications assigned to those born male, the drugs inhibit the development of a deeper voice, an Adam's apple and the growth of body and facial hair. They also limit the growth of the genitalia.
Surgeries on minors
Komodo's analysis found that there was 56 genital surgeries among adolescents between 2019 and 2021 among patients aged 13 to 17 years with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In addition, during that period, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients aged between 13 and 17 with the same gender dysphoria condition, according to Komodo's analysis of insurance claims data. This count does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket by the patients and their families.
