ESPE Abstracts

There is an exponential rise on the topic of Gender dysphoria (GD) on the internet, pubmed data, seminars and conferences. However, most of these discussions skewed toward the western populations. GD appears invisible or non -existence in Africa? Recently, GD has been conceptualized as a continuum of a bipolar disorder with varying degrees of dysphoric expression in between the poles. Hence, dimensional measure of assessment which is in keeping with nature’s experiences is being advocated rather than the previous categorical approach of being present or absent. A total of 747 primary/secondary school students and university freshmen aged 10-24 years were studied using the 27-item gender identity/gender dysphoria questionnaire for adolescents and adults (GIDYQ-AA). Participants were divided into early, mid and late adolescents. The composite and domain scores were calculated using the criteria described by DeoGracias and comparison of the median scores were done using Mann-Whitney U-test and Kruskal-Wallis test as appropriate. Dunnett’s post-hoc test was used for pairwise comparisons. There was a slight male preponderance (51.5%) and half of the participants (50.6%) were in the early adolescent period. The prevalence of self - identified transgender and self -reported non-heterosexuals was 0.9 and 18.6 percent, respectively. The participants as a group scored 4.56 out of a possible 5 in the gender dysphoria scale (indicating less gender dysphoric symptoms in this cohort). However, participants in mid- and late- adolescents had significantly lower scores in the gender dysphoria scale when compared with early-adolescents (P = 0.009). Sexual orientation and self-labelled identity did not differentiate participants in their scores in the GD scale (P= 0.53 and 0.31), respectively. The findings of this study, although, preliminary, demonstrated a less gender dysphoric symptoms in Nigeria compared to the western population. Nevertheless, some degrees of GD was noticed in some participants revealing that it is still existent, perhaps its expressivity is hindered by stigma, the laws of the Nigeria government or lack of specific clinic to attend to their needs or a combination of these factors.