A recent study shows a clinically meaningful reduction in suicidality among transgender and gender diverse young people when they started getting hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria, adding another piece of evidence to back keeping gender-affirming care available for trans youth.The study, published byThe Journal of Pediatricsin November and appearing in the journals February 2026 edition, examined whether hormone therapy (HT) reduced suicidality in trans and nonbinary young people. This is an important question since lawmakers who want to ban gender-affirming care usually present it as dangerous, even though the science shows that it is life-saving. Related GOP lawmakers to permanently ban gender-affirming care even after their own report supported it Researchers conducted a retrospective chart review of responses to the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) submitted by more than 400 patients between the ages of 12 and 20 at a multidisciplinary pediatric gender health clinic in the Midwest.All of the 432 patients were receiving hormone therapy, while 30 of them had been on puberty blockers prior to beginning treatment with hormone therapy. All received HT for at least three months, with most receiving treatment for at least 364 days and some for 1,899 days (about five years). Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Researchers found that suicidality significantly declined from pretreatment to post-treatment. According to journalist and trans rights advocate Erin Reed, some patients ASQ responses indicated a 68 percent decline in suicidality after receiving HT for an extended period of time. GCN reports that 18.5% of participants showed a decrease in suicidality, while 1.4% showed no decrease in their non-zero ASQ scores. Most participants (75.5%) showed no suicidality at both the start and conclusion of the study.As Reed notes, researchers also found that patients who had received puberty blockers prior to beginning hormone therapy showed lower suicidality scores when they began HT than the general study sample. While, as GCN notes, 4.6% of the studys participants showed an increase in suicidality over the course of the study, according to researchers that could reflect underlying mental health issues, environmental stressors, relief at baseline knowing they may be starting HT, or pre-existing trajectories or worsening suicidality that may have slowed, but not reversed, rather than an adverse effect of HT.Citing a similar 2024 study, Reed argues, Together, these studies sharply contradict conservative narratives claiming that transgender youth are poorly screened for care or that regret and harm are widespread outcomes of treatment.Hormone therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria in young people, the researchers concluded, was associated with clinically meaningful reductions in suicidality over time, extending prior findings with a larger sample and longer follow-up. These study findings provide clinical evidence supporting the mental health benefits of timely access to HT in this population, they wrote, and show a stable and clinically meaningful association between HT and reduced suicidality.However, in his Substack newsletter, out science journalist Benjamin Ryan whose work in recent years has been highly critical of gender-affirming care for minors noted that critics have called the study weak and accused the authors of overstating its findings and baselessly suggesting that the treatment definitively caused the positive outcome.But according to Reed, the studys authors addressed demands for randomized control trials in research related to youth gender medicine. Although randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered among the most rigorous methods for evaluating treatment efficacy, they are ethically and practically challenging in the context of adolescent HT for GD. Masking is not feasible, control group retention is poor when treatment is accessible elsewhere, and equipoise is contested (ie, there is no longer genuine uncertainty among clinicians about whether treatment is beneficial), given the growing consensus around the benefits of HT for GD, the studys authors wrote. Many thus view it as unethical to withhold a medically indicated intervention from youth experiencing high distress.In the absence of randomized control trials, they added, observational studies provide important insights by examining outcomes in real-world clinical settings without assigning participants to treatment or control groups. In medicine, observational designs are commonly used when randomization is infeasible and are often sufficient to inform clinical guidelines, especially when findings are consistent.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.