Suicide attempt risk highest in transgender teens, finds study

The research on the suicide behaviour of transgender adolescents found that those who were born females but identified themselves as males had greater chances of committing suicide.

Sudhakar Jha | Published: September 12, 2018 7:32 pm

The research found that 50.8 per cent of transmasculine adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19 have attempted suicide at least once © Shutterstock

LGBT community has been given a great relief after the Supreme of India abolished the controversial Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. However, the community is yet to come out in open feel secure about its gender identity. And that’s what a new research has found that those who were born females but identified themselves as males had greater chances of committing suicide.

Dr. Toomey and his co-authors found that 50.8 per cent of transmasculine adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19 have attempted suicide at least once. They also found that 41.8 per cent of non-binary adolescents, those who don’t identify as exclusively male or exclusively female, too have attempted suicide.

According to the research, transfeminine, those who were born male but identify as female, were at 29.9 per cent, and those questioning their gender identity, were at 27.9 percent. It was found that the risk was lower for cisgender teens, those who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. Among girls, the number was 17.6 percent, while the number for boys was at 9.8 percent.

The research was based on a survey that focused on 40 developmental assets know to be associated with healthy development, as well as risk behaviours like depression and suicidal tendencies. Data was collected from over 1,20,000 adolescents between 2012 and 2015, where most identified themselves as cisgender.

“Nonbinary youth are putting themselves out there every day as not being read by society as male or female, and there hasn’t been much research on this population, but we expect that they’re probably experiencing the highest levels of discrimination or victimization from their peers and from communities, based on their gender presentation,” Toomey said in the study.

“Nonbinary youth do not identify as totally masculine or totally feminine, so it complicates an understanding of sexual orientation, which is rooted in a binary, male-female understanding of gender. Thus, for these youth, the combination of gender and sexual orientation may be more complicated,” added Dr. Toomey in the statement.

The team also examined the impact of other factors like race and ethnicity, parents’ educational qualifications, and the types of communities where teens grow up, on the risk of suicide. And they found that cisgenders who belonged to a racial or ethnic minority had more suicidal risk. But the same factors were not associated with higher risk in transgenders.

Published: September 12, 2018 7:32 pm

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