Abstract
Adolescents seeking professional help with their gender identity development often present with psychological difficulties. Existing literature on psychological functioning of gender diverse young people is limited and mostly bound to national chart reviews. This study examined the prevalence of psychological functioning and peer relationship problems in adolescents across four European specialist gender services (The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and Switzerland), using the Child Behavioural Checklist (CBCL) and the Youth Self-Report (YSR). Differences in psychological functioning and peer relationships were found in gender diverse adolescents across Europe. Overall, emotional and behavioural problems and peer relationship problems were most prevalent in adolescents from the UK, followed by Switzerland and Belgium. The least behavioural and emotional problems and peer relationship problems were reported by adolescents from The Netherlands. Across the four clinics, a similar pattern of gender differences was found. Birth-assigned girls showed more behavioural problems and externalising problems in the clinical range, as reported by their parents. According to self-report, internalising problems in the clinical range were more prevalent in adolescent birth-assigned boys. More research is needed to gain a better understanding of the difference in clinical presentations in gender diverse adolescents and to investigate what contextual factors that may contribute to this.
Highlights
Growing awareness of specialist gender identity clinics and acceptance of gender diversity by the wider community may have contributed to the increasing number of children and adolescents seeking professional help with their gender identity development [1]
The percentage of birth-assigned girls referred to the UK clinic was greater compared to the percentage of birth-assigned girls referred to The Netherlands, Z(1, 862) = − 2.82, ρ < 0.01
Between-clinic differences were found which showed that adolescents from Switzerland and the UK were significantly older at referral compared to adolescents from The Netherlands and Belgium, F(3, 958) = 42.18, ρ < 0.01
Summary
Growing awareness of specialist gender identity clinics and acceptance of gender diversity by the wider community may have contributed to the increasing number of children and adolescents seeking professional help with their gender identity development [1]. To avoid an artificial inflation in the calculation of behaviour problems on the CBCL and YSR, we set the value to “0” if item 110 was scored as 1 or 2 and the same was done for any other item if the parent identified gender-related issues. By taking this item out of the calculation, we used it as a measure for reporting gender dysphoric feelings. A translation for CBCL and YSR was available [15, 16]
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