Important declarations from the German and Swiss Societies of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

8 june 2024

The German Society for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Neurology (DGPPN) (https://www.dgppn.de/), Germany's largest psychiatric society, has declared that if it were to vote on the guidelines for gender-affirming care for children and adolescents, it would reject them.

In addition, the Swiss Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (SGKJPP) https://www.sgkjpp.ch/fr/s has joined the call for a revision of the current draft German-language guidelines for gender-dysphoric young people. The SGKJPP stated that the revision should be consistent with the recent position statement of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP). The ESCAP statement calls on healthcare professionals ‘not to promote experimental and unnecessarily invasive treatments with unproven psychosocial effects and, therefore, to adhere to the “primum-nil-nocere” (first, do no harm) principle’.

DGPPN statement translated into English from German

Statement by the Swiss Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy supporting the ESCAP statement