Steps for treating a girl that feels she is a boy

Dr. Olson, pedestrian and expert in gender variant children, explains the steps for treating a girl that feels she is a boy. The importance of mental health assistance and adolescent medical doctors are also mentioned.
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Steps for treating a girl that feels she is a boy

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In female-bodied young people who have male gender identities, we often encounter them for the first time when they are starting puberty, or they’ve been in puberty for a year or two. These are often young people who have really lived through their childhood as boys. Puberty sometimes comes to them as a great shock to them and they don’t understand what’s happening. Why are they developing an adult female body? It’s very distressing for them. I have a lot of young people where we see an emergence of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, depression and anxiety because of the onset of an adult female puberty. These young, people, I’ve experienced, they do a lot of work on their own. There’s a tremendous YouTube community for trans guys. They come in with a lot of knowledge about what it’s going to mean to start taking testosterone. If these young people have been on blockers prior to, ideally, they can be on blockers to suppress their estrogen production, and if they’d been on them early enough, they may not have gotten any breast development or started any menstrual cycle, but that is an exception. That is not the rule. Most often, I see trans-guys who have already been through or are well into a female puberty. And we use testosterone to suppress the estrogen production, and also to masculinize their bodies. These young people need to have laboratory follow-up every three months for the first year that they’re in treatment. They also need the assistance of a mental health professional during the transition time. They need to run through with an experienced therapist about the conversations they are going to have with friends, with family members, with intimate partners about the fact that they’re trans.

Dr. Olson, pedestrian and expert in gender variant children, explains the steps for treating a girl that feels she is a boy. The importance of mental health assistance and adolescent medical doctors are also mentioned.

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Johanna Olson, MD

Medical Director, Center for Transyouth Health and Development, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Johanna Olson, MD is a pediatrician in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Medical Director of the hospital’s Center for Transyouth Health and Development.  She specializes in the care of transgender youth, gender variant children, youth with HIV, and chronic pain. Board certified in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Dr. Olson is also an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. She has appeared on ABC's 20/20, The Dr. Phil Show, CNN, Dateline NBC and The Doctors to educate audiences about the needs of transgender youth.

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