New Seattle clinic for transgender youth

The numbers are staggering -- almost half of young people who identify as transgender attempt suicide without the right family and medical support.

Now in Seattle, Dr. David Breland and his team at Children’s Hospital are aiming to do something for those children by making coordinated care for transgender young people easy to find.

He is launching a new Gender Clinic, set to open in early October at Children’s Hospital.

“This is the fifth clinic in the United States serving youth,” Breland said proudly from his office with the clinic poised to open.

Breland currently is one of a handful of doctors who help young people in Western Washington looking to transition.

With all his responsibilities at Children’s Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, he has usually only been able to help a few teens thinking about transitioning at any given time.

He routinely gets calls from dozens of families with children as young as 8 years old who really do not have very many coordinated options.

“Now that we have this clinic, we’re going to see quite a few patients,” Breland said.

However, some social conservative groups question what can really be done medically for children so young that they are just figuring out their own bodies.

Breland said his first priority is making sure children looking to transition are getting the right mental health care. He said only then, and only when puberty starts, his team may use fully reversible puberty-blockers to buy the child time to make a good, informed decision about the future.

He also said just giving children support and time matters as much as the medicine.

"I think that's probably more important, -- respect and decency," Breland said.

The Gender Clinic will have its own website and information when it opens in early October.

For now, use this link for general clinic contact information.

Cox Media Group