Julia W. Mason’s scientific contributions

... The current controversial debate among clinicians and researchers about gender dysphoria (GD) in adolescence is based on observations that raise many questions: Worldwide, specialized centers are showing increasing rates of youth, with a presentation of predominantly birth-assigned female adolescents who identify as boys/transmasculine and often wish for gender-affirming medical interventions (Aitken et al., 2015;Chen et al., 2016;de Graaf et al., 2018de Graaf et al., , 2021Herrmann et al., 2022;Kaltiala-Heino et al., 2015;Levitan et al., 2019), or who identify as nonbinary, beyond the established gender dualism of male or female (Chew et al., 2020;Herrmann et al., 2023a, b). Similarly, there have been reports of clinical subgroups of adolescents who, after gender-conforming development in childhood, first present with GD in adolescence (Hutchinson et al., 2020;Zucker, 2019), raising questions about whether these clusters may be different from earlier cases (often with prepubertal onset of GD), for example, regarding their levels of psychological problems (Abbruzzese et al., 2023). ...

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Onset Age and Internalizing Problems in Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: Is There an Association?

... The significant rate of problematic adaptations, psychiatric symptoms, and self-harm in this youth cohort […] is explained away as merely manifestations of minority stress, with unsubstantiated claims that these mental health problems will resolve with gender transition-and only with gender transition ( [84] p115). ...

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Gender-affirming medical treatment for adolescents: a critical reflection on “effective” treatment outcomes

... their findings were consistent with later systematic evidence reviews: low-quality evidence for physical effects of hormonal interventions; evidence regarding psychosocial and cognitive impact was "generally lacking." rew et al. (2021) has been extensively criticized for an inadequate search strategy, inappropriate attribution of causation, failure to adequately assess certainty of evidence, and absence of appropriate process for making recommendations (Clayton et al., 2022). ramos et al. (2021) noted studies were at risk of bias, and did not assess evidence certainty. ...

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Critiques of the Cass Review: Fact-Checking the Peer-Reviewed and Grey Literature

... These limitations to accessing GAMT are increasingly paralleled in Europe. For example, in Sweden, pediatric endocrinologists now only prescribe puberty suppression under strict conditions [15]. Similarly, NHS England recently made the decision to reorganize the provision of GAMT for TGD youth and restrict the prescription of puberty suppression, further highlighting the precarity of this medical treatment [16][17][18]. ...

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Gender-affirming medical treatment for adolescents: a critical reflection on “effective” treatment outcomes

... Psychosocial functioning is a core facet of human life that shapes how people relate to others and the quality of their social relationships. Psychosocial functioning refers to a variety of traits, characteristics and dispositions that have been broadly classified 14 as guidelines for gender-affirming hormone therapies as a reason to limit their use 41,42 . Therefore, a systematic review of changes in psychosocial functioning is useful to highlight outcomes for which there is strong evidence as well as to instigate further research on outcomes that need clarification. ...

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A systematic review of psychosocial functioning changes after gender-affirming hormone therapy among transgender people