The study raises serious questions about how families, schools, doctors, government, and the media should grapple with the increasing number of children who label themselves transgender.
(Kelsey Harkness – The Federalist) One in every two transgender adolescents who are female but identify as male has attempted suicide in the past year, according to a new study. The study was published in Pediatrics, the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The study raises serious questions about how families, schools, doctors, government, and the media should grapple with the increasing number of children and teens who label themselves transgender. In addition to the alarmingly high rate of suicide attempts among transgender girls, the study reported an attempted-suicide rate of more than 40 percent for adolescents who call themselves “gender nonconforming” (neither exclusively male nor female), and nearly 30 percent for transgender male teens.
Researchers said they did not find any evidence that non-Caucasian transgender youth were at a higher risk compared with white transgender adolescents. Higher levels of education among parents and geographical location—urban or rural—did not have a significant effect on suicide attempts either.
To arrive at the results, three researchers from the University of Arizona analyzed asurvey filled out by more than 120,000 young Americans between the ages of 11 and 19. By comparison, they found that 14 percent of all teenagers had attempted suicide at least once. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults ages 10 to 34 in the U.S.
The study’s leading author, Russell B. Toomey, PhD, focuses his work on youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or what they call queer—meaning that any attempts to discredit the research as “anti-LGBTQ” will likely fall flat. Toomey describes his research in his bio:
Research: