Transsexualism: sex reassignment and quality of life
F. Hurtado Murillo, M. Gómez Balaguer, F. Donat Colomer

SUMMARY

Objective: To analyze variables related with the treatments of sexual reassignment, assessing the quality of life before-after following a year of the psychological and hormonal intervention.

Design: Intervention before-after study.

Emplacement: Center of Sexual and Reproductive Health of the Valencian Community.

Participants: Twenty-six transsexuals, 13 men and 13 women, that requested to begin the process of sex change. Selected by means of serial sampling, they completed the diagnosticapproaches settled down both in the manuals (DSM-IV-TR and CIE-10), and in the specific standards of eligibility and additional of disposition, for the hormonal and surgical therapy recommended by the International Association “Harry Benjamin” for Gender Identity Disorders.

Intervention: Triadic therapy (psychological, hormonal and surgical), with a psychological evaluation of minimum duration of three months before the beginning of the hormonal therapy and psychotherapeutic support during the hormonal and surgical therapy.

Main measurements: Relative frequencies to the treatments of sexual reassignment and the relationship with the quality of life before and after a year of the psychological and hormonal intervention, measured by Quality of Life Index (QLI-Sp), spanish version (Mezzich, Ruipérez, Pérez, Yoon, Liu y Mahmud, 2000).

Results: The index of quality of life, analyzed by differences of means and with confidence interval of 95% after a year of treatment reflects a significant improvement, as much for the group of the sample as for the women. The men not show clinical improvements significant.

Conclusions: All the transsexual people in the sample show clinical improvement in the Quality of Life Index after a year of the psychological and hormonal intervention. However, only the woman-to-man transsexual group show significant differences.

KEY WORDS

Transsexualism, treatment, psychotherapy, hormones, quality of life.