What the studies show
Estimates of how often people stop or reverse a transition range from well under 1% to around 30%, largely because studies measure different things. Clinic and registry studies counting formal reversals report the lowest figures: 0.6% of trans women and 0.3% of trans men restarted birth-sex hormones after gonad removal in the Amsterdam cohort (Wiepjes et al., 2018), 2.2% of 681 Swedish adults applied to reverse a legal gender change (Dhejne et al., 2014), and 21 of 2,467 Swedes later reversed a legal change (Clark et al., 2025). A meta-analysis of 27 surgical studies put regret at about 1% (Bustos et al., 2021). Prescription data diverge sharply: 98% of 720 Dutch adolescents still had a hormone prescription at a typical age of 19–20 (van der Loos et al., 2022), yet in US military health records an estimated 30% had stopped refilling within four years, with females on testosterone about 2.4 times as likely to stop (Roberts et al., 2022). A systematic review of 15 studies rated the whole evidence base very low quality (Feigerlova, 2025).
Surveys of detransitioners, who are mostly female (69% to 92%), describe varied reasons: becoming comfortable with their birth sex (60%), concern about medical complications (49%), and reinterpreting gender distress as rooted in trauma or mental illness (38%) (Littman, 2021). Many report unmet needs, with only 18% feeling adequately supported (Vandenbussche, 2022). By contrast, a survey limited to people who still identified as trans found 13% had ever detransitioned, mostly citing external pressures (Turban et al., 2021).
Limits of the evidence
Regret appeared on average about 11 years after starting hormones in Amsterdam (Wiepjes et al., 2018) and about 8 years after legal change in Sweden (Dhejne et al., 2014), while many studies follow patients for 2–4 years. Loss to follow-up is substantial (36% in Amsterdam), and only 24% of surveyed detransitioners had told their clinicians (Littman, 2021), so clinic records likely undercount. Definitions range from a 90-day prescription gap to formal legal reversal. Most low-regret data come from adults treated under older, stricter protocols rather than today's largely adolescent, female patients (Cohn, 2023). Detransitioner surveys, in turn, recruit self-selected volunteers from online communities, cannot verify answers, and lack comparison groups. Neither body of evidence yet establishes a reliable detransition or regret rate.