According to the annual report of the Norwegian National Treatment Service for Gender Incongruence (NBTK), 268 minors were referred to hospital to start gender change treatment in 2022, which is an increase of 13% from the previous year.

The NBTK also informed that the number of adult patients for assessment and treatment also rose by 19% compared to 2021.

Both are record figures.

“Reasons are complex, but easily accessible information about LGBTQ+ and a strong media focus may be part of the reason why more people believe that gender-affirming treatment can solve their life challenges”, said Kjersti Gulbrandsen, the NBTK head department.

“Unclear and unsafe”

In 2021, the government introduced new national guidelines for the treatment of people who want to change gender, which were criticized for being “unclear and unsafe”.

The guideline does not require a psychiatric assessment before treatment, but for the Rikshospitalet (Oslo University hospital), the only hospital so far where patients could start the process of gender reassignment, it is mandatory to have a referral from their family doctor, and that the discomfort with one's gender existed for some time, not as aresult of a mental illness.

For trans people's rights organizations, those requirements “contribute to the morbidisation of and additional burden for trans people and make the waiting time even longer”.

Puberty blockers as “experimental treatment”

Due to those discrepancies, the National Commission of Inquiry for the Health and Care Service (Ukom) recently launched a report stating that there is a need to strengthen patient safety.

“It is necessary to clarify what is sound practice and to set up the services to look after children and young people. This will ensure that they receive support and help while also preventing incorrect or unsafe treatment”, said Stine Marit Moen, head of medicine and health sciences at Ukom, in a press release.

Ukom urges the Ministry of Health and Care “to consider whether a national medical quality register should be established for the treatment of children and young people with gender dysphoria, in order to contribute to an overview, better quality and reduce unjustified variation in patient treatment”.

Futhermore, it recommends “to define puberty blockers and hormonal and surgical gender confirmation treatments for children and young people as experimental treatment”.

Both Ukom and the Ministry of Health agree that a large group of people do not receive the health care they are entitled to and that the “monopoly” of the Rikshospitale must be broken. That is why the Ministry has just opened a regional gender change treatment unit at another hospital, in Vestfold.