Gender-Affirming Psychological Assessment with Youth and Families: A Mixed-Methods (original) (raw)
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Advances in Psychology and Psychological Trends, 2020
Practitioners working with gender non-conforming children and youth ascribe to general guidelines based on the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People (2012). These guidelines inform clinical practice and assessment and emphasize the need for gender affirming care, but they do not include strict treatment criteria. Consequently, there are multiple perspectives and approaches in the field regarding effective assessment and treatment of gender diverse and transgender clients. Given the ongoing debate around best practices, the current exploratory research study investigates the perspectives and satisfaction of transgender youth and their parents actively seeking out gender health assessments (e.g., hormone readiness assessments). Twenty-five parents and 22 youth who were accessing gender health services through a community outpatient clinic completed a questionnaire about the ge...
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Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth and their families are seeking medical and mental health care at increasing rates. As the number of multidisciplinary pediatric gender programs expands, we consider the history and evidence base for gender affirmative care and highlight existing models of care that can flexibly accommodate the diverse needs of TGD youth and their families. Comprehensive multidisciplinary care includes both medical and mental health providers who work collaboratively with TGD youth and their caregivers to assess gender-related support needs and facilitate access to developmentally appropriate medical and mental health interventions. In addition to direct health-care services, multidisciplinary care for TGD youth and their families extends into community training, education, community outreach, nonmedical programming, and advocacy for TGD youth.
A Parent-Report Gender Identity Questionnaire for Children
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2000
This paper reports on the psychometric properties of a 16-item parent-report Gender Identity Questionnaire, originally developed by P. H. , to aid in the assessment of children with potential problems in their gender identity development. The questionnaire, which covered aspects of the core phenomenology of gender identity disorder (GID), was completed by parents of gender-referred children (N = 325) and controls (siblings, clinic-referred, and nonreferred; N = 504), who ranged in age from 2.5-12 years (mean age, 7.6 years). Factor-analysis indicated that a one-factor solution, containing 14 of the 16 items with factor loadings ≥.30, best fit the data, accounting for 43.7% of the variance. The gender-referred children had a significantly more deviant total score than did the controls, with a large effect size of 3.70. The GIQ total score had negligible age effects, indicating that the questionnaire has utility for assessing change over time. The genderreferred children who met the complete DSM criteria for GID had a significantly more deviant total score than did the children who were subthreshold for GID, although the latter group had a mean score that was closer to the threshold cases than to the controls. With a specificity rate set at 95% for the controls, the sensitivity rate for the probands was 86.8%. It is concluded that this parent-report gender identity questionnaire has excellent psychometric properties and can serve as a useful screening device for front-line clinicians, for whom more extensive, expensive, and time-consuming assessment procedures may be precluded.
Language Value. Volume 17, 2024
Michelle Forcier, Gerrit Van Schalkwyk, and Jack L. Turban, present their multidisciplinary, collaborative volume Pediatric Gender Identity: Gender-affirming care for Transgender & Gender Diverse Youth in 2020. In it, the editors offer a broad overview of the current research, clinical recommendations, and conceptual frameworks in the field concerning affirmative care for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth. In addition, more insight is provided on diversity support and resiliency encouragement, along with discussions about primary and specialty care, neurodevelopmental and psychosocial needs of TGD, and recognized hormonal and surgical recommendations. In this review, I will describe the main contents of the volume according to four sections: foundational knowledge, psychosocial and supportive approaches, clinical care and treatment, and cultural and legal perspectives
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2012
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care suggests a letter of recommendation be provided from a mental health professional if a transsexual desires hormone therapy or surgery. Therefore, transsexual clients have a unique dependence on therapists to obtain medical treatments needed to live life in their affirmed gender. Despite this need for therapeutic services, most therapists lack the training that is necessary to sensitively serve transsexual clients, particularly transsexual youth. While a published clinical assessment tool exists for therapists to determine readiness of adult transsexual clients for medical gender transition, no similar tool is available for therapists working with transsexual youth. This article discusses therapeutic issues specific to transsexual youth and families and presents a clinical assessment tool for determining transsexual youth's readiness for medical treatments. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) outlines Standards of Care (Meyer et al., 2001) that provide helping professionals with guidelines for working with transsexual clients. These guidelines are not legal requirements or an ethical code; however, they provide thoughtful recommendations for gender transition procedures, and many physicians providing treatments such as hormones and surgeries follow these standards. The Standards of Care state that, in order for a transsexual individual to receive hormone treatment or surgery, a letter of recommendation should be obtained from at least a Master's-level mental health professional. For genital surgery, an additional letter is required from a psychiatrist or a doctoral-level clinical psychologist. Therefore, transsexual clients have a unique dependence on therapists to obtain the medical treatments they need to live life expressing their affirmed gender. Despite this need for therapeutic services, most therapists lack the training that is necessary to sensitively serve transsexual clients (Coolhart, Provancher, Hager, & Wang, 2008; Lev, 2004). Erich, Boutte-Queen, Donnelly, and Tittsworth (2007) study found that only 24% of social workers surveyed felt their education prepared them ''moderately well'' to work with the transgender community, while 35% reported their education did not prepare them well and 33% reported they were not prepared at all to work with the transgender community. Further, while measures of competence for mental health professionals working with the lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients have been growing in their development, these measures often do not address competencies related to working with transgender clients (Perosa, Perosa, & Queener, 2008). Therapists are even less prepared for working with transsexual children and adolescents (Brill & Pepper, 2008), and the psychotherapeutic and medical needs of gender-variant youth are perhaps the most controversial issue within the field of transgender health care (Lev, 2004).
Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology, 2018
Growing numbers of transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) youth are presenting for medical and mental health care, and increasingly, pediatric psychologists are being called upon to serve as critical members of interdisciplinary care teams. In this commentary, we present information on TGNC youth in three distinct developmental cohorts: prepubescent TGNC children, peripubertal TGNC youth, and pubertal TGNC adolescents. First, we describe the social, medical, and/or surgical treatments available to each cohort of youth. Next, we address the state of the science related to these treatments. Then, we highlight some of the ongoing controversies related to social, medical and/or surgical interventions that are most relevant to pediatric psychologists and the role they play in gender-affirming care. Finally, we conclude with a call for papers for an upcoming special issue of Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology focused on advancing the practice of pediatric psychology in transgender health care. Keywords: gender dysphoria; transgender; gender diversity; interdisciplinary care; gender affirmative care Championed by pediatric endocrinologist, Norman Spack, MD, the first interdisciplinary pediatric gender clinic in the United States (US) was established in 2007 at Boston Children's Hospital to provide medical transition services to transgender youth (Edwards-Leeper & Spack, 2012). Since that time, more than 35 such programs have been launched in the US (Hsieh & Leininger, 2014) to keep up with demand for services. Indeed, growing
Serving transgender youth: Challenges, dilemmas, and clinical examples
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 2015
Historically, many gender variant individuals have lived in a chronic state of conflict between selfunderstanding and physical being, one in which there was a continual misalignment between others' perceptions of them and their internal self-perception of gender. Only recently have professionals from mental health and medical realms come together to provide services to these youth. This article describes an innovative program: the first mental health and medical multidisciplinary clinic housed in a pediatric academic center in North America to serve the needs of gender variant youth. We describe our model of care, focusing on the psychologist's role within a multidisciplinary team and the mental health needs of the youth and families assisted. We highlight clinical challenges and provide practice clinical vignettes to illuminate the psychologist's critical role.
Parental acceptance project: Affirming gender variant youth
2019
The number of gender expansive and gender variant youth has risen dramatically, leading to a mental health and education service gap that must be addressed. The author reviews relevant literature supporting the importance of the parent-child relationship via the lens of attachment theory, affirming that parental support for gender variant children is critical to their well-being and overall positive life outcomes. A curriculum for parents of gender variant children is proposed, in an effort to educate and support parents of gender variant children, so that they may in turn develop affirmative and supportive practices toward their children. The ultimate goal of the proposed curriculum is to contribute toward the health and well-being of gender variant children by providing this educational and support program to their parents and families.
Gender Dysphoria in the Pediatric Population: Initial Experience of a Transdisciplinary Group
Revista Urología Colombiana / Colombian Urology Journal, 2021
Introduction Although there is an increasing experience in the management of transgender individuals, this has not been thoroughly explored in children. The need to establish a comprehensive and transdisciplinary management is of critical importance. In order to solve this issue, we want to report the results of a cohort of individuals with gender dysphoria (GD) seen by our transdisciplinary group from a social and clinical and health access perspective. Methods A 10-year retrospective case series of all patients that had been seen by our transdisciplinary team was reviewed. The main demographic characteristics were described, as well as impact variables in terms of diagnosis and treatment of these individuals. A social description of each individual was described. Frequency, distribution, and central tendency measures were evaluated for data presentation. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 24.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY) software was used. Results Four cases of GD were included. ...