Children's Medical Center Dallas officially opened the doors to its new clinic for transgender children and teenagers last month, according to a report from The Eagle.
The Genecis program, called GENder Education and Care and Interdisciplinary Support, is the first program in the region to provide comprehensive mental and endocrine care for youth with gender dysphoria.
It was started by pediatric endocrinologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Ximena Lopez, MD, and other specialists after nearly three years of treating young patients. Their first patient was a 7-year-old gender dysphoric girl named Evie Singleton who, from the age of 2, insisted she was a boy.
"People have this idea that transgender people are just weird and awkward and troubled," Dr. Lopez told The Eagle. "That's because historically people came out as transgendered adults when they'd spent much of their lives depressed because they were not being themselves."
Increasingly, younger and younger children have been coming out as transgender. Between 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent of the U.S. population is transgender, according to some estimates cited by The Eagle.
To be officially given this label, Meredith Chapman, MD, a psychiatrist at Genecis, told The Eagle she looks for several traits while screening patients, including consistently identifying as cross-gender over time and having the discrepancy between how they feel and are perceived stir emotions like pain and anxiety.
Regarding treatment, children must undergo a six-month assessment before being considered for medical intervention and must agree to attend therapy at all stages of care. Then, when appropriate, physicians may prescribe drugs to delay puberty, usually around the age of 12, and roughly four years later administer cross-sex hormones that trigger a transition to adulthood in the patient's identified gender. Children's Medical Center Dallas does not perform gender reassignment surgery because that procedure is only legal for adults in the U.S.
Thus far, Genecis has treated approximately 40 children and teenagers and another 40 or so have been referred to the program by therapists and parents.
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