Gender Dysphoria and Our Transgender Youth: A Health Crisis
When thinking about deadly health outcomes in children and adolescents, more common diseases are usually considered, like diabetes or cystic fibrosis; however, few are aware that gender dysphoria is a more common health risk and can be more deadly than any disease listed above. It is estimated that one in every 100 adolescents are suffering from gender dysphoria, and 30-50% of those children are having, or have had, suicidal ideations. That means potentially one in every 200 children are considering, or have considered, suicide because they feel their emotional and psychological identity as male, female, or nonbinary is opposite to their biological sex.
Dr. Leonidas Panagiotakopoulos, Pediatric Endocrinologist and Assistant Professor at Emory University says, “Multiple studies, on a small and large scale, have shown that it is impossible to capture this accurately, but the closest estimate that we have, for who has gender dysphoria amongst teenagers, comes to, time and time again, one and 100. One and 100 is 3 times more common than type one diabetes, (and) 30 times more common than Cystic Fibrosis.. But it is much more deadly than them because statistics also show that untreated gender dysphoria, and treatment includes, not only psychological support and evaluation support and treatment, but also endocrine care, can lead to 30-50% suicidal ideations and attempts. Separate from that, a lot of these patients have debilitating degrees of anxiety and depression; I’m talking much more than 50%, up to 80% have severe depression, enough to stop school, to stop doing things that kids and adolescents do, and to stop progressing in life.”
Dr. Panagiotakopoulos also helps manage a pediatric endocrinology clinic for transgender youth at The Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Center for Advanced Pediatrics. He helped to open the clinic in 2015, stating that it has grown from just a few patients total to new patient intake ranging from 3-4 weekly which allows him to provide services for approximately 200 transgender youth.
The two very specific types of care provided at the pediatric endocrinology clinic are professional mental health support and evaluation, as well as endocrine care. With endocrine care, there are two paths of treatment. One is reversible. The patient can push the “pause button” or block puberty. Dr. Panagiotakopoulos explains that this route offers more time for the patient to either receive mental health care and decide to continue with maturing as their assigned gender, or receive evaluation by both himself and the mental health professional, each of them deciding together to move forward with hormones that will allow the patient to mature as the opposite of their assigned at birth gender. The second path of treatment is irreversible, this option being agreed upon by the patient and medical professionals that hormones should be taken, aiding in the adolescent’s development of male or female characteristics, opposite of their assigned at birth gender.
Dr. Panagiotakopoulos, accepts all forms of medical insurance and Medicaid. Specifically, he says that he does not want the cost of care to deter families from seeking their services. The clinic has a nursing and social work staff willing to help patients find alternative forms of payment. He makes it clear that payment should not be an obstacle in your adolescent’s journey, “I’ll see you for free, I don’t care. Let’s deal with your issue right now. And we will have the social worker talk to you about getting the coverage you need for any other things. I just think it is more important that people come no matter what it is.”
Dr. Panagiotakopoulos’ primary focus today is to make the message public that gender dysphoria is a huge health risk to youth and adolescents and it must be treated as such. He also wants to spread the word that there is a clinic in Atlanta, Georgia that treats transgender children or children with gender dysphoria, focusing on the eradication of a youth health crisis.
If you would like more information on Dr. Panagiotakopoulos pediatric transgender work and medical care, please contact Alexa Bryant at email hidden; JavaScript is required. To contact the clinic directly, please call 404-785-5437. or visit them at The Center for Advanced Pediatrics, 1400 Tullie Rd. NE 3rd Floor, Atlanta, GA, 30329.