Countering trans suicide figures

@ChopperC110P "They found that suicide occurs around the same rates all through life, regardless of pre, during or post transition.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317390/"

Thank you for that - interesting. So in fact it is untrue to say that trans kids are more at risk of suicide than non-trans kids?

The teeny tiny cohort of 324 people is so small at +/- 1 suicide completely reverses the conclusions. Because suicide is so multi-causal- people complete suicide for example for being victims of a hate crime, or sexual assault, or suffering a bereavement, an accident, a breakup, job loss, financial difficulties, substance abuse…not just because surgical transitioning didn’t go to plan. So it’s impossible to put any weight into a study where 2 suicides = transitioning lowers suicide risk to 3 suicides= transitioning increases suicide risk because there are too many other life events that trigger suicide in human beings that could confound the results.

A study like this one with 8,263 is much more reliable for drawing any statistical preliminary data on whether transitioning materially affects suicidality amongst transpeople. They found that suicide occurs around the same rates all through life, regardless of pre, during or post transition.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317390/

For someone who appears to be keen on accuracy and facts, you sure are quick to generalise one person's posts to a whole group of people you also inaccurately describe as 'anti-trans'.

@TeaKlaxon "The Swedish study does not show higher suicide among post-transition trans people compared to pre-transition trans people.

This isn’t difficult stuff."

So because a properly designed study to measure suicidal tendencies over a whole cohort using carefully matched controls wasn't done to your specifications you're going to write off the actual results. OK then.

The Swedish study does not show higher suicide among post-transition trans people compared to pre-transition trans people.

This isn’t difficult stuff.

No weight given by me to that study, been ignored/dismissed.

If you believe something without having evidence for that belief then your belief is based on faith, not facts.

///

A bit like the belief that humans can change sex then?

The thingy walsh video that was shared on twitter contains videos of an adult ftm who cites statistics saying the highest danger point is I think 7/8 years post transition.

Sorry bit vague. I'm meant to be cooking. Good luck.

It's not really a sample, but as close to the total population we can get of Swedish transitioners who both had hormone treatment and genital surgery, because the government collects medical data on almost all Swedes. Sweden is not a large country in population, and transgender people who had had surgery would have been a very small group before 2012.

Hmm - and yet weight is placed on a self-selected group of 27 in the other study quoted upthread whereas this is taken from a whole cohort of properly matched people?

Sample size= 324 people.
Tiny study. Only 3 suicides led to that conclusion.

@TeaKlaxon you wrote "You first claimed that transition increases suicide risk. Turns out that was false.

Then you tried to claim that the demographic information around youth suicide implied no higher rate of suicide among trans people. That was also wide of the mark."

Perhaps you could explain to me how the results of the study quoted in my post do not contradict what you said?

What part of that do you think contradicts what I’ve said?

You forgot an important bit there @Clymene - the fact that lifetime suicidality is a cumulative measure so it is literally suicidality before transition + suicidality after transition. You cannot compare them directly and go Ah ha! Lifetime is higher than before trabsition so transitioning is making suicidality increase. This statistic works counter-intuitively.

So the conclusion you have intuitively arrived at is actually wrong, because it is unknown without any control population as to whether transition reduced the final lifetime suicidality % or not. The study even goes on to say this, but you stopped your cut and paste a little prematurely.

“For example, as expected, when we compare lifetime to past year suicidality we find that ideation (55% vs. 51%) and especially attempts (29% vs. 11%) decrease. It seems counterintuitive, on the other hand, that suicide attempts are lower before transition (ideation 36.1%; attempt 13.1%) than over most other periods (past year attempts being the exception). However, we may expect to find higher rates of suicidality over the lifetime because this is a category that represents a non-transition specific and cumulative experience, in contrast to the single period represented by before transition. It may also be the case that individuals who do not desire transition represent a less dysphoric group and are therefore less suicidal.64 By contrast, evidence is mounting that barriers to transition-related healthcare contribute to suicidality among those who desire such measures63,78 and though it sometimes increases during transition,78 it typically decreases once desired transitional goals are completed.30,102 Indeed, a recent qualitative inquiry into suicide protective factors among trans adults identified several important protective factors among this population, one of which was socially and/or medically transitioning (for those who seek it).103 Additionally, suicidality may be generally higher among transgender individuals than the general population throughout the life course, due to factors unrelated to transition, such as stigma and discrimination.20,55,78”

Your DD is likely correct, if we go by the fabulous study @Clymene posted:

“In the studies examined in the current meta-synthesis, an average of 56% of participants experienced lifetime suicidal ideation and 29% had ever attempted suicide. Given the rate of suicidality in the general population, 0.5%2 and 3.7%,3respectively, it is clear that transgender individuals are disproportionately impacted by this phenomenon. Indeed, even over the past year, where 51% of participants ideated and 11% attempted, suicidality is approximately 14 and 22 times higher than in the general public.”

@TeaKlaxon - the relevant part of the Swedish study linked to upthread:

Results
The overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up (aHR 2.8; 95% CI 1.8–4.3) than for controls of the same birth sex, particularly death from suicide (aHR 19.1; 95% CI 5.8–62.9). Sex-reassigned persons also had an increased risk for suicide attempts (aHR 4.9; 95% CI 2.9–8.5) and psychiatric inpatient care (aHR 2.8; 95% CI 2.0–3.9). Comparisons with controls matched on reassigned sex yielded similar results. Female-to-males, but not male-to-females, had a higher risk for criminal convictions than their respective birth sex controls.
Conclusions
Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

Thanks for the link. I thought that might have been the Swedish study being referred to.

That also does not compare pre-transition with post-transition, so is also not relevant for those claiming that transition makes suicide figures worse.

But I’m not the one making claims here. You are.

You first claimed that transition increases suicide risk. Turns out that was false.

Then you tried to claim that the demographic information around youth suicide implied no higher rate of suicide among trans people. That was also wide of the mark.

Its not up to me to produce data backing up claims I’ve not made.

That graph (figure 2 ) doesn’t show anything about transitioning. It is lifetime suicidality.

I feel that one of the reasons it is very difficult to separate trans out from other comorbidities is that, well, trans isn't actually a thing, exactly. I mean it's not "wrong sex brain" that's not real and thankfully we are seeing that nonsense argued a little less these days. It's not any physical actual condition. It's really just a belief. Body dysmorphia is a real psychological condition but then you're drawing the obvious comparison to anorexia (also correlated with autism and child sexual abuse). But anyway, whilst body dysmorphia is a condition that's not precisely what "trans" means and often isn't even part of "trans" at all. Especially for boys who consider themselves trans as opposed to adolescent girls.

This whole thing about what trans correlates with feels like old scientific concepts of the Ether. It's assumed its there and lots of conversation about it's effect on those with it. But what if it was just autism and social expectations and unfounded belief all along. Is it meaningful to say "this way of thinking about yourself is a medical condition"?

I feel not.

I've been thinking about this and I wonder if practically there would be anyway to produce robust data on this.

I don't think anyone would want a study where children with gender dysphoria are randomised to transition or not and then somehow forced to go about their lives in a way where there were no confounding factors and then followed up a few years later to see who had died by suicide.

I can't see another way of robustly testing specifically whether or not transition prevents suicide.

This is the 2012 Swedish study https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016885. It has the advantage of Swedish medical record keeping which essentially covers all people, so the usual problems with samples don't apply here much if at all. It addresses completed suicide, not ideation, and only for those transgender people who medically transitioned.

I think someone asked about it?

On suicidal ideation, in general: It's higher among certain teens, including those with autism or various mental or mood illnesses, those who are gay or Lesbian, and those who identify as transgender.

To understand how being just transgender affects suicidal ideation, research needs to address the fact that teens can be all three of those things or two of them at the same time, and if that's the case we can't just attribute all observed differences to being transgender.

So studies need to control for those other causes of suicidal thinking. I have not found one which seems to do that, but this paper by Briggs brings out some of the issues:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02287-7

The poster likes to unpick data without offering any credible research in rebuttal themselves.

Notice the lack of response to the research I offered in links (that also cites credible research itself).

Unless you have any data, I'm really not interested in engaging with you any more @TeaKlaxon

Have a good evening