Trans teens are much more likely to attempt suicide

(Reuters Health) – Transgender teens are much more likely to attempt suicide than teens whose identities match those on their birth certificates, and transgender youth are particularly vulnerable, according to a US study.

About half of transgender teens who identify as men but have been assigned a female sex at birth have attempted suicide at least once, according to the study. And 42% of adolescents who do not identify exclusively as men or women have at least one previous suicide attempt.

About 30% of trans teenagers – who identify as women but have birth certificates as men – have tried suicide at least once, as do 28% of adolescents who question their sexual identity.

Unlike all these groups of transgender teens, only 18% of women and 10% of men who are cisgender – which means that their gender identity matches the one on their birth certificate – have attempted suicide.

"Our results are surprising," said study leader Russell Toomey of the University of Arizona at Tucson.

"Previous studies had previously shown that transgender teens had higher suicidal behaviors than cisgender teens, but our study is the first to go beyond this type of gross comparison to determine whether there are critical differences in suicidal behaviors." transgender youth. Toomey said by email.

"Although the four subgroups of transgender have reported higher levels than young cisgender women and men, it is important to know that transmasculin and non-binary trans youth are at higher risk for targeted prevention and intervention," added Toomey.

To assess the link between gender identity and suicide risk, researchers examined survey data collected between 2012 and 2015 from more than 120,000 young people aged 11 to 19 in the country.

Participants were on average 15 years old and less than 1% of them were transgender.

Among other things, the survey asked teens whether they had tried suicide one or more times.

Overall, nearly 14% of participants reported having had one, report pediatric researchers.

The study also found that parental education and the family's socio-economic status did not seem to influence adolescents' attempts to commit suicide.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens and young adults in the United States, the researchers note.

The study was not a controlled experiment to prove whether adolescent sexual identity influenced suicidal behavior.

Transsexuals may be at higher risk of suicide because of their marginalization or discrimination, victimization or harassment, Toomey said.

"For transgender youth, we know, for example, that rejection, discrimination and victimization by peers, schools, community and family are associated with an increased risk of suicidal behavior," Toomey noted. "Transgender youth could respond to these experiences by internalizing this rejection (eg, shame), feeling like a burden to others, or perceiving that they do not belong".

Another limitation of the study is that, although conducted nationally, it was not nationally representative; It included many rural and suburban adolescents and relatively few urban teens.

And it is possible that teenagers do not accurately report the history of suicide attempts, the authors acknowledge.

"The fact is we do not know why transgender teens have these incredibly high suicide rates," said John Ayers, a researcher at the University of California at San Diego, who was not involved in this study.

"It's extremely important that we start investing to ask why, instead of just counting how much, especially to design effective prevention campaigns," Ayers said via email.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2CQbK4Y Pediatrics, online September 11, 2018.