More transsexuals seeking medical help in Taiwan  

台湾欲变性而就医者逐年增加 男性想变女性者居多

(ECNS) -- Research by Taipei Veterans General Hospital released Monday shows that last year saw a 20 percent increase in the number of transsexual people who sought hospital help in Taiwan, and most of them were males, Hong Kong China News Agency reported.

Conducted by the hospital and National Yang Ming University, the research looked into gender identity from a brain science standpoint, and verified that transsexual people are different from ordinary people in brain nerve mechanism, and they should be accepted and respected.

Lee Ying-chiao, a director at the hospital, said nine in 100,000 males in Taiwan and five in 100,000 females want to change their gender, according to health insurance data from 1996 to 2010.

"The number of transsexual people seeking medical help is increasing every year. And the majority want a male-to-female transition, as with the international trend, but reasons are still unknown," Lee said.

As transsexual people's self-identification of gender is different from their assigned sex at birth, nearly half of the 517 individual cases she saw in the last 16 years suffered from depression, Lee added.