Gender dysphoria in adolescence: examining the rapid-onset hypothesis.

Abstract

The sharp rise in the number of predominantly natal female adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria and seeking treatment in specialized clinics has sparked acontentious and polarized debate among both the scientific community and the public sphere. Few explanations have been offered for these recent developments. One proposal that has generated considerable attention is the notion of "rapid-onset" gender dysphoria, which is assumed to apply to asubset of adolescents and young adults. First introduced by Lisa Littman in a2018 study of parental reports, it describes asubset of youth, primarily natal females, with no childhood indicators of gender dysphoria but with asudden emergence of gender dysphoria symptoms during puberty or after its completion. For them, identifying as transgender is assumed to serve as amaladaptive coping mechanism for underlying mental health issues and is linked to social influences from peer groups and through social media. The purpose of this article is to analyze this theory and its associated hypotheses against the existing evidence base and to discuss its potential implications for future research and the advancement of treatment paradigms.