But these studies looked at relatively few patients and often lacked controls.
Karolinska Institutet researchers published one of the few controlled, large-scale, long-term follow-up studies in 2011. They looked at 191 male-to-female and 133 female-to-male patients who had undergone surgery between 1973 and 2003, matching each with 10 randomly chosen people who hadn’t undergone surgery as controls. Their findings? Sex-reassigned people had a five-fold higher risk of attempted suicide, and were three times as likely to have a psychiatric disorder. (…)
And if the medical community recommends psychiatric care, not cosmetic procedures, for people suffering from anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder, despite those patients’ belief that changing their appearance will solve their problems, why not do the same for gender dysphoria patients? In fact, surgery might worsen their self-image. Some develop an addiction to plastic surgery, even seeking back-alley procedures.
