Government ban on puberty blockers puts young lives at risk – APANZ

APANZ – the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand strongly opposes the New Zealand Government’s decision to stop new prescriptions of puberty blockers for transgender and gender-diverse young people. The Government’s decision to stop new prescriptions of puberty blockers for transgender and gender-diverse young people is dangerous, discriminatory, and not supported by evidence or clinical expertise.

Judgements and decisions around prescribing puberty blocker medications are clinical decisions which involve important and complex considerations. As with all medications, the proper people to be assessing the appropriateness of their use are clinicians in collaboration with young people and their families. It is wrong and dangerous for politicians to override the expertise of psychotherapeutic, psychological and medical professionals and exert control over such significant clinical decisions.

Furthermore, the ban has numerous other troubling and questionable aspects.

This ban affects only trans youth — even though the same medicines remain fully available for conditions like early puberty, endometriosis, and prostate cancer. The government’s decision further marginalises a group of people who already experience disproportionate rates of discrimination, violence and adverse mental health outcomes.

The Ministry of Health is fully aware of New Zealand’s disastrous youth suicide rate, which, as reported by UNICEF in 2020, is the second worst in the developed world at 14.9 deaths per 100,000 adolescents. This rate is more than twice the average among the 41 OECD countries surveyed (6.5 deaths per 100,000 adolescents). Further, we know that trans and gender diverse youth are amongst the most vulnerable to self-harm and suicide (https://countingourselves.nz/). Research into the effects of a similar ban on puberty blockers in the UK found that this significantly increased these risks for trans youth and resulted in a myriad of other negative impacts on mental health (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2025.2521699)

We are therefore drawn to an inevitable conclusion that the decision to ban puberty blockers is about political benefit and appealing to prejudice and misunderstanding, rather than protecting the needs of the most vulnerable in society.

The Government claims it is acting “out of caution” because long-term evidence is limited. But this argument collapses under simple scrutiny:

• Many childhood medications (including ADHD medicines and some antidepressants) are prescribed with limited long-term data — yet no one proposes banning them.
• The medicines used as puberty blockers have been safely prescribed to children since the 1980s (Carswell, J. M., Lopez, X., & Rosenthal, S. M. (2022). The Evolution of Adolescent Gender-Affirming Care: An Historical Perspective. Hormone Research in Pediatrics, 95(6), 649-656. doi:DOI: 10.1159/000526721 )
• Only transgender youth are being denied access, even though the drug itself has not changed.

If the evidence truly concerned the Government, the ban would apply to all uses of the medication — not only to one group of young people. This is discrimination, not caution.

A responsible approach to policy and practice development for prescription of puberty blockers would place evidence and care at the heart of decisions – evidence gathered from data gathered scientifically, from clinical experience and from the perspectives of transgender and gender diverse youth and their families.

This development overrides clinical judgment. It denies families a say in their own children’s healthcare, and it sets a dangerous precedent where politicians, not doctors, control treatment.

This ban will not protect young people — it will hurt many.

It removes access to medicine known to reduce distress and suicide risk.

It singles out transgender youth for unequal treatment.

And it ignores the voices of the very people whose lives are at stake.

Judgements and decisions around prescribing puberty blocker medications are clinical decisions which involve important and complex considerations.