The average age of people expressing “gender dysphoria” – the idea that one’s biological sex and subjective sense of gender identity don’t match – is plummeting according to new research published in the journal General Psychiatry. The research also claims the onset of gender dysphoria takes place at an earlier date for females than males.

The study takes into account data from 49 different health organisations over a five-year period from 2017 to 2022, comprising the medical records of 66 million people, 80 percent of whom live in America. Researchers took a subset of 42 million people aged between 4 and 65, and 66,078 people in this subset were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, equivalent to a rate of 155 people per 100,000.

The prevalence of gender dysphoria rose significantly between 2017 and 2022, while the average age of diagnosis fell by over 15 percent, from 31 to 26.

The increasing trend of diagnosis was significantly more rapid among females than males before the age of 22. Numbers rose sharply at age 11, peaked between 17 and 19, and then decreased below the figure for males at age 22.