A large, peer-reviewed study published Friday in JAMA Network Open found that transgender youths prescribed puberty blockers had significantly lower adjusted odds of diagnosed mood disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors than transgender youths who did not receive the medications, adding new evidence to one of the most politically contentious areas of pediatric medicine.
The nationwide retrospective cohort study examined insurance claims data from more than 231,000 youths between 2016 and 2025, comparing transgender and cisgender youths who either did or did not receive puberty blockers.
ITS NICE TO HAVE CONFIRMATION OF THIS BUT WHY ARE WE YELLING?
Your link is broken, here’s working one:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2851743
Importantly, puberty blocker prescription was associated with lower odds of mood disorder and suicidality diagnoses, but only among transgender youths. While this result should be studied further and interpreted with caution, it aligns with prior literature10,32,33 and clinical insights.34-36 More research is necessary to determine the mechanisms behind this association; although puberty blocker prescription appeared to attenuate both outcomes, it was not alone associated with diagnostic odds for transgender youths reduced to levels observed among their cisgender peers. Due to limitations of the administrative claims database being analyzed, we could not adjust for factors like psychosocial support, and policy environment measures (eg, regional and national transgender equality) did not appear to be associated with outcomes, although this may reflect measurement error (eg, scores were not available for the full study period or inconsistently measured from year to year).
No causal link demonstrated, potentially affected by other factors like how supportive your environment is.
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Without a causal link shown it’s just peer reviewed correlation. Yes, there are things to suggest it helps with mental health outcomes but as the paper says directly, this is not a proof and there are other factors at play.
I’m not a fan of scientific studies where correlation is all they can come up with. If correlation alone was what we went by then scientists could propose public policies to reintroduce maritime piracy to decrease global warming - they’re inversely correlated after all.
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They’ll just dismiss this the same way they do with every mental health association study, it’s not placebo controlled.
Same thing they did with psychedelic studies, then when they did placebo controlled studies they claimed those weren’t valid because the rather obvious side effects make blinding both pointless and impossible.
Cis kids with precocious puberty may not be the control group they think they are. My only concern is that this could be used to gatekeep puberty blockers by scaremongering, putting the onus on kids to somehow prove they’re trans. I realise giving puberty blockers to prepubescent cis kids instead is probably massively unethical, but
Wow, not forcing bodily changes on people who have said that they don’t want those changes leads to better mental health! Who would’ve guessed??!
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2851743
Given these factors—from absent temporal sequencing and unmeasured baseline severity to exposure misclassification and dataset limitations—I do not believe that the study can substantiate the suggestion that PBs confer MH benefits or justify their further implication that earlier hormonal intervention may be beneficial.
