New York City-based psychotherapist Paul Garcia-Ryan heads an organization of mental health providers, Canadians among them, that doesn’t support the model that conceptualizes children and teens with gender dysphoria as having been “born in the wrong body” and that changing the body via hormones or surgery is necessary to relieve their distress.

“When a mental health professional doesn’t view gender dysphoria through a gender-affirming lens, they can begin to conceptualize the case more broadly and see other factors that are also contributing to the distress,” said Garcia-Ryan.