Abstract
Transgender adolescents often experience co-occurring mental health symptoms, with anxiety being one of the most common. Often, these symptoms are not severe enough to lead affirming mental health providers to recommend slowing down the physical transition process for the youth. However, in some cases, when the anxiety symptoms are severe and occur with other complex factors, it may be in the adolescent’s best interest to take a slower, more cautious path toward irreversible interventions. This chapter describes the case of “Alex,” a gender diverse adolescent with severe anxiety. A description of the case and an explanation of how it was approached from an affirming and developmentally informed lens, balancing the complicated mental health picture, the parents’ reservations, and Alex’s desire to pursue testosterone treatment, are provided.
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Edwards-Leeper, L. (2018). Anxiety and Gender Dysphoria. In: Janssen, A., Leibowitz, S. (eds) Affirmative Mental Health Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78307-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78307-9_9
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