An investigation into the cause of increased suicidality in transgender youth. Is it the lack of access to transgendered healthcare or is it the co-existing social stressors and mental health issues?
“And as Skrmetti and other lawsuits made their way through federal courts, some of the central medical claims girding the legal case for pediatric gender treatments — that decades of thorough study had found them to be safe and effective — began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts. Last summer, thousands of emails and other documents released in a case challenging Alabama’s ban raised further questions about medical standards at the heart of the A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit against Tennessee….
In most respects, the movement’s day in court felt like a retreat….Pressed on the longstanding claim that gender-affirming care prevented dysphoric teenagers from killing themselves, Strangio conceded the point. ‘There is no evidence,’ he told the court, ‘that this treatment reduces completed suicide,’ adding that ‘completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.’ Engaging with the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, Strangio even uttered the phrase he considered anathema: ‘born male.’”
How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” by Nicholas Confessore, June 19, 2025, New York Times
The evil ones groom the children, confuse them, prey on any of them that show vulnerability. Then the evil ones blackmail the parents, saying “your child will die because you do not obey us.”
One point I would add is that medicalizing those with GD can cause death, for example in botched surgeries that cause death.
Those deaths-via-trans-medicalization are never mentioned in the pro-trans literature, yet they are very significant. Lives are lost via medicalization. We know this. Say it loud & clear: medicalizing kids carries the risk of death.
Thank you for this excellent review of the suicide question. The literature is so sparse and so confusing, it is difficult to understand what it means. When there are methodological problems as well as errors in interpretation of results in the research, the conclusions that can be drawn are very limited.
There are several serious problems with the suicide research on trans-identified teens and adults. First, as was stated in this article, the research designs of the existing studies do not tell us anything about causes of suicide in these groups of people. As stated in the article, there are several studies that show elevated rates of suicide among people who went through medical transitions. We can conclude that medical transitioning did not prevent all suicides among the people studied. What we do not know is whether the suicide rate would have been lower, higher or the same if those people had not transitioned. We can't rule out from these studies the possibility that transitioning lowered the suicide rate.
The second major problem is that most of the reports on suicide rates among trans-identified adolescents and adults mixes up the following terminology: "suicidality," "self-harm," "suicide attempt," and "suicide." These are not the same things, and the rates of these behaviors are known to vary with sex, age, ethnicity, comorbid diagnoses, and other factors. We should be focusing on "completed suicides." "Suicide attempts" cover a wide range of behaviors. Most self-reported "suicide attempts" have low or zero probability of lethality, and were not even intended by the person to be lethal. It is generally the case that male people are more likely to commit suicide, female people are more likely to make non-lethal "suicide attempts."
"Non-suicidal self-harm" includes behaviors like cutting oneself or burning oneself, causing wounds that may or may not require treatment at an ER. These behaviors are common in emotionally disturbed adolescents and are also known to be affected by social contagion in that population.
The elevation of completed suicides among trans identified adolescents appears to be about five or six times higher than it is for kids of similar ages in the general population. As the article states, this elevation can probably be accounted for by the comorbid diagnoses so many of these adolescents have: depression, personality disorders, autism, and so on. We can't say for sure because we don't have research that can be used to draw conclusions about causation. There is no evidence at all presented in any study I have seen that adolescents who claim a trans identity commit suicide because of "minority stress," as is always claimed by researchers biased towards "gender affirmative care."
There were rebuttals to the turban 2022 article, not sure if you link them, hard to tell from a quick read...?
Also, Ruuska et al 2024 did compare those with gd who did and didn't get medical intervention and others who also sought mental health help, the completed suicides were correlated with mental health issues, not with GD and not with getting treatment for GD or not.
“And as Skrmetti and other lawsuits made their way through federal courts, some of the central medical claims girding the legal case for pediatric gender treatments — that decades of thorough study had found them to be safe and effective — began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts. Last summer, thousands of emails and other documents released in a case challenging Alabama’s ban raised further questions about medical standards at the heart of the A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit against Tennessee….
In most respects, the movement’s day in court felt like a retreat….Pressed on the longstanding claim that gender-affirming care prevented dysphoric teenagers from killing themselves, Strangio conceded the point. ‘There is no evidence,’ he told the court, ‘that this treatment reduces completed suicide,’ adding that ‘completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare.’ Engaging with the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, Strangio even uttered the phrase he considered anathema: ‘born male.’”
How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” by Nicholas Confessore, June 19, 2025, New York Times
The evil ones groom the children, confuse them, prey on any of them that show vulnerability. Then the evil ones blackmail the parents, saying “your child will die because you do not obey us.”
thank-you for this well reasoned essay.
One point I would add is that medicalizing those with GD can cause death, for example in botched surgeries that cause death.
Those deaths-via-trans-medicalization are never mentioned in the pro-trans literature, yet they are very significant. Lives are lost via medicalization. We know this. Say it loud & clear: medicalizing kids carries the risk of death.
Excellent work! Thank you.
Turban should be banned from publishing anything on this topic.
No.
Thank you for this excellent review of the suicide question. The literature is so sparse and so confusing, it is difficult to understand what it means. When there are methodological problems as well as errors in interpretation of results in the research, the conclusions that can be drawn are very limited.
There are several serious problems with the suicide research on trans-identified teens and adults. First, as was stated in this article, the research designs of the existing studies do not tell us anything about causes of suicide in these groups of people. As stated in the article, there are several studies that show elevated rates of suicide among people who went through medical transitions. We can conclude that medical transitioning did not prevent all suicides among the people studied. What we do not know is whether the suicide rate would have been lower, higher or the same if those people had not transitioned. We can't rule out from these studies the possibility that transitioning lowered the suicide rate.
The second major problem is that most of the reports on suicide rates among trans-identified adolescents and adults mixes up the following terminology: "suicidality," "self-harm," "suicide attempt," and "suicide." These are not the same things, and the rates of these behaviors are known to vary with sex, age, ethnicity, comorbid diagnoses, and other factors. We should be focusing on "completed suicides." "Suicide attempts" cover a wide range of behaviors. Most self-reported "suicide attempts" have low or zero probability of lethality, and were not even intended by the person to be lethal. It is generally the case that male people are more likely to commit suicide, female people are more likely to make non-lethal "suicide attempts."
"Non-suicidal self-harm" includes behaviors like cutting oneself or burning oneself, causing wounds that may or may not require treatment at an ER. These behaviors are common in emotionally disturbed adolescents and are also known to be affected by social contagion in that population.
The elevation of completed suicides among trans identified adolescents appears to be about five or six times higher than it is for kids of similar ages in the general population. As the article states, this elevation can probably be accounted for by the comorbid diagnoses so many of these adolescents have: depression, personality disorders, autism, and so on. We can't say for sure because we don't have research that can be used to draw conclusions about causation. There is no evidence at all presented in any study I have seen that adolescents who claim a trans identity commit suicide because of "minority stress," as is always claimed by researchers biased towards "gender affirmative care."
There were rebuttals to the turban 2022 article, not sure if you link them, hard to tell from a quick read...?
Also, Ruuska et al 2024 did compare those with gd who did and didn't get medical intervention and others who also sought mental health help, the completed suicides were correlated with mental health issues, not with GD and not with getting treatment for GD or not.
https://mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/ebmental/27/1/e300940.full.pdf
Maybe you cited it?
Thanks!