Adolescent Delusion of "Belonging", or Recognized Pathology?

Study Abstract:
"In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as 'rapid-onset gender dysphoria', appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion. The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe."
"Parents also report that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity. The purpose of this study was to document and explore these observations and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria, which is inconsistent with existing research literature."
A Study of Parental Reports, Lisa Littman, researcher, department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University School of Public Health

Elliott Kunerth, 17, a transgender male high school student in Mankato, hugs his girlfriend, Kelsi Pettit, 17, after the Minnesota State High School League board voted to pass the Model Gender Identity Participation in MSHSL Activities Policy in Brooklyn Park, Minn., on Dec. 4, 2014.Leila Navidi / Star Tribune via AP file

Suddenly the rare becomes commonplace. Some boys and girls have always mused to themselves what it might be like to be a boy if one were a girl, or a girl if one were a boy. It is the syndrome of the 'grass' being 'greener' elsewhere. Many people have a disinclination to accept what and who they are, and many people feel cheated by life's circumstances, wondering what they have missed or are missing, and why cannot they have experiences and recognition relating to being someone else. There is also the attraction to many of being rebellious and 'different', of eliciting notice to their person; good or bad, that acknowledgement that they are singularly different is compelling.

Young people imagine themselves to be misunderstood, overlooked, taken for granted, not taken seriously. Suddenly, they are being taken seriously. The medical community has been pressured by a very vocal group who challenge the common sense and mostly appropriate custom of gender recognition and identification at birth (natal identification), assigning proper acknowledgement in gender through natural selection. What appears to be at issue is the dysphoria claimed between physical characteristics and mental attitudes.

Infants gravitate toward behaviours and attitudes that are not gender-specific. And occasionally boys will be fascinated with attributes of girlish functions and vice-versa. Mostly these impulses are transitory. There is nothing in the development of the human being that must insist certain behaviours are off limits to the opposite gender. There are many boys and men who reflect behavioral emotions and interests most commonly seen in women and the opposite is also true. And while there are instances when the mind and the body simply are not a match, it's doubtful their numbers reflect what is now seen in society.

Where parents of infants feel they can read their child turning to the opposite sex and viscerally react by guiding them away, there are also parents in the present more 'tolerant' social scene who set out to demonstrate just how supportive they are of their children's 'real' persona that they encourage the deviance from one sex to another, making of it a perfectly normal transition which in this social climate, brooks no criticism. Yet there is a kind of social hysteria at work here resulting from the loudly assertive and angry accusations from the LGBTQ-2 community succeeding in persuading those parents they're on the right track.

Society has turned from its rejection of seemingly abnormal gender identification that once harassed homosexuals, in threatening and violent attitudes, to its current attitude of acceptance, long in coming. But that acceptance didn't suffice to persuade the once-persecuted that they were now viewed as part of society; many among them demanded all the formal trappings of  'normal' society, as in marriage, denoting which among the same-sex couples be viewed as 'husband' and which as 'wife', a fairly risible situation, but one which the general public was prepared to accommodate.

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The present-day rash of young children and teens declaring themselves to be a mind placed in the wrong body has turned the normalcy of the social covenant inside-out and upside down. Some parents may be complacent, reassured that society now accepts it all as 'normal-abnormal', while many more parents are anguished and confused, unhappy with their children's insistence that they are not the boy or girl their parents thought they were, but since the medical profession has given a clean bill of health to the reassignment process, feel they have nowhere to turn.

"When we tried to give our son's trans doctor a medical history of our son, she refused to accept it. She said the half-hour diagnosis in her office was sufficient ..." recalled one parent whose story was repeated in the newly published study. "I overheard my son boasting on the phone to his older brother that 'the doc swallowed everything I said hook, line and sinker. Easiest thing I ever did'", reported another on the credulity of her child's therapist.

The study's author, taking a critical look at Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), took the time to review popular Internet sites such as Reddit, SubReddit and Tumblr to pick up additional problematical comments, where contempt for parents is rife and encouraged by the examples of others, and the festering emotions of victimhood are shared in a mutual resentment of parental authority. Linked with criticism of heterosexuals and "cisgenders" the common cause of rebellion takes its form in declarations of life-changing claims of transgenderism.

Before 2012, points out Ms. Littman, there was little research on adolescent onset of gender dysphoria. Two clinics existed prior to 2012, one in Canada, the other in The Netherlands, in possession of data providing empirical information on adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria. Both of the institutions studying the issue concluded that individuals in adolescent-onset were "more likely to have significant psychopathology".

The study included 256 parents of ROGD adolescents and young adults who completed detailed surveys. Most of the young adults were female, averaging 15 years of age and of that group 41 percent claimed to have expressed non-heterosexual urges prior to onset, while 62 percent had been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder. According to the study, none of the young adults "would have met diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood". Tellingly was the finding that parent-child relations tended to deteriorate once the girls "came out".

The study leans heavily on ROGD as a form of "social contagion". Common among these teens was the time spent on websites, particularly Tumblr and Reddit where advice on best lying practices are available when confronting clinicians: "Get a story ready in your head ... keep the lie to a minimum" and "look up the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for transgender and make sure your story fits it". 

Study Conclusion:
"Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) describes a phenomenon where the development of gender dysphoria is observed to begin suddenly during or after puberty in an adolescent or young adult who would not have met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood."
"ROGD appears to represent an entity that is distinct from the gender dysphoria observed in individuals who have previously been described as transgender."
"The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate AYAs from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning."
"More research is needed to better understand this phenomenon, its implications and scope."