How common is transition regret?

Everyone's favorite elephant in the room

According to a comprehensive 2015 study, 8% of trans people detransition, and for 62% of those it’s just temporary. Those who detransition overwhelmingly cite external pressure: facing too much harassment or discrimination after they began transitioning (31%), having trouble getting a job (29%), or pressure from a parent (36%), spouse (18%), or other family members (26%). 0.4% reported that they detransitioned because they realized it wasn’t for them. In another study, 97.5% of trans youth still held a transgender identity five years after social transition.

Critics of youth transition often claim that if left alone, trans youth will grow out of it, but the study from which that claim originates did not differentiate between gender non-conformity and gender dysphoria, and when it could not locate 45.3 percent of the participants for follow up, marked them as desisting. A follow up from the same author found that children diagnosed with gender dysphoria found that it either worsened or remitted between ages 10 and 13. The criteria for gender dysphoria diagnosis has since changed.

Regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries are even lower — just one percent, according to a meta-analysis. This rate is much lower than the regret rate for other things that we allow people to do without talking to a mental health professional, like getting LASIK eye surgery (3 percent regret), surgery for prostate cancer (13 percent regret), total knee replacement surgery, which 22 percent of people regret within one year, getting a tattoo (26% regret), or having children, which between 8 and 17 percent of parents say they regret.