Australian study finds rate of trans young people who have ever attempted suicide of 48%

[CaptainWarbeck]

I've seen on here discussions of the trans attempted suicide rate being over estimated and from dodgy statistics.

This study (Australian research) has found a rate of 48% ever having attempted suicide, n=739, so a large study.

Pic of relevant page in report and link here.

They also found ASD over represented in the trans population they looked at.

Thoughts? Any academically minded MNetters take a look?

[Koloh]

Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey: Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, England, 2014

Crucial to notice here (IMO): look at the turbocharge effect on young autistic women (even white middle class women, usually the group with the most access to MHC). Extraordinarily strong effect.

[cromeyellow0]

Here's the key table from Minnesota study:

Unfortunately it doesn't proper comparison between TIMs and males and TIFs and females, but e.g.
22% of TIMs report attempted suicides, 33% of TIFs, compared to 7% of non-trans.

This doesn't address the issue of causal direction (delineated by WhatWouldGenghisDo) nor the concern (raised by Datun) that trans ideology might unwittingly encourage adherents to exaggerate their suicidality.

In Minnesota black and poor children are overrepresented among trans people, which does not seem to hold in Britain.

[WhatWouldGenghisDo]

You also can't compare a retrospective self-report measure with epidemiological data collected using different recruitment strategies, different assessment tools, and different age ranges. It just doesn't tell you anything above and beyond the fact that your methodology was completely different.

The controlled study posted upthread by cromeyellow0 looks like a much better source wrt these issues although I must admit I have only looked at the abstract.

[MentholBreeze]

They do have a control, but it's not exactly matched in terms of age. I think the comparison is a big Australian study of youth mental health.

But that's the general population - not a population of which 70% have diagnosed depression, 9% have a diagnosed personality disorder, and 16% have ever been diagnosed with psychosis - and that's not even mentioning the proliferation of eating disorders, abuse, and homelessness.

And all they've shown is correlation - not causation.

It feels like going onto a forum full of pregnant women and asking questions, then using that to say that women that weigh more than an average woman don't have periods - all these things are correlated, but the women aren't having periods because they're pregnant, not because they're over the average weight - ie. they all correlate, but the causation is arse about tit.

Honestly, who can't look at the issues these kids are having and say 'well, lets look at all these issues before we start adding mucking about with your body into an already off-kilter mix'

[ArbitraryName]

Thing is, they aren’t really considering the double hermeneutic of the social sciences. So by reproducing the trans-identifying young people are suicidal narrative in their research, they’re actually reinforcing it and may be creating the phenomenon they purport to describe.

[Maryz]

That's all very well, Captain, but it seems at the moment that the "treatment" offered isn't to provide better access to support, it's full-blown transition as soon as possible. That's the worrying thing.

[CaptainWarbeck]

They do have a control, but it's not exactly matched in terms of age. I think the comparison is a big Australian study of youth mental health.

It's a difficult one. The study does say this:

However, why some individuals do not identify as their sex assigned at birth is unknown, and although some researchers have explored brain and other biological markers to determine differences between trans people and cisgender people, the results are contradictory and inconclusive.

So they're not supporting male/female brains pseudo science. The gist of the whole thing seems to be: there are serious mental health issues in this self identifying population, let's try and get a scale of it and offer some recommendations to provide better access to support.

[Mumsnut]

I feel that young trans people are being subtly encouraged to say they feel / have felt / have acted on suicidal feelings. Because it is part of the narrative now, isn't it?

[Maryz]

I wonder what the results would be if their "research" was based on self selection from the following groups:

(1) teenagers who are depressed (self-diagnosis accepted, not necessarily a formal diagnosis)
(2) teenagers who are anorexic
(3) teenagers with ASD (or other challenging diagnoses such as ODD, ADHD etc)

Because it seems to me that if you were studying any of those three groups and offered them a questionnaire, especially online, the ones who decided to answer would be the ones more likely to have serious issues and suicidal thoughts.

None of those groups could be helped by, as pisa puts it, hormones and castration.

[hackmum]

OneFlew: "First off, threats of suicide are usually treated with caution because of the known potential for manipulation, but secondly if someone is suicidal then it is quite probable they do not understand what is best for themselves anyway."

Yup. This person feels suicidal, and is asking to have surgery to remove their genitalia and receive hormones to change their appearance. Clearly, the best thing to do in this situation is to accede to their request...

[Datun]

Because they cite the non-acceptance of trans-people as the reason for suicidal thoughts.

Frankly, I have never understood the premise.

It’s mostly trans who are prostitutes who are abused and harmed.

I can’t see how, even if the entire world says they are women, it would make any difference.

Punters are going to kill. Finding out someone is a man at the last minute might induce rage. So I don’t see how it’s helpful to pretend otherwise.

[OneFlewOverTheDodosNest]

I don't understand why reported suicidality is supposed to mean that trans people should get what they demand.

First off, threats of suicide are usually treated with caution because of the known potential for manipulation, but secondly if someone is suicidal then it is quite probable they do not understand what is best for themselves anyway.

[Datun]

In any case they can’t have it both ways. Either trans children have a high risk of suicide and need treatment, or it’s not a treatable illness. Which one is it?

[ArbitraryName]

I agree. Much better research is needed, particularly to explore whether vulnerable young people with mental health and social problems in their lives are particularly drawn to transgender as a means of self-managing, or whether the issues result from being trans. My wager would be on the former but it is something that research needs to be very carefully designed to explore.

There is a huge issue of suicide ideation and the effects of a very dominant narrative that you be trans is to feel suicidal. That will have an effect on participants in a study like this.

[hackmum]

I also applaud Genghis and Purple. It's a dreadful abuse of statistics. I think perhaps the most important of the flaws identified is the lack of a control group. Suppose you conducted the survey in exactly the same way amongst an ordinary group of 14-25 year old Australians. If we don't know how many would claim to have attempted suicide in that group the results are meaningless.

[Gingernaut]

What control did they use?

Did the sample 'normal' 14-25 year olds to determine their rates of self harm and attempted suicide?

Did they look at the average suicide/self harm/attempted suicide rate for that age group?

Studying one group in isolation, with no reference to the rest of the population is very poor science.

[Datun]

When you ask respondents whether they were hospitalised, far fewer say yes.

Maybe that should always be an included question, in that case.

Otherwise I can’t see how anyone can reliably form a conclusion about suicide at all, in general.

[cromeyellow0]

Are these suicide attempts ever verified? If the person was admitted to hospital, are the records checked, for instance?

All such surveys are based on self-reports and so will exaggerate the levels. When you ask respondents whether they were hospitalised, far fewer say yes. I've not seen any study of adolescents where they matched self-report in a survey to hospital records; confidentiality would make this almost impossible.

[Datun]

Are these suicide attempts ever verified? If the person was admitted to hospital, are the records checked, for instance?

Because if not, all it demonstrates is that 48% of people say something.

[BlindYeo]

Yes Myvisions I was also going to ask how the suicide attempts were counted. Medical/police records or self-report?

I also think a self-selected sample could be very biased. I think of the people on health forums I have frequented, where by the nature of illness, the people most unwell are posting frequently while those doing well are off living their lives.

[pilatesofthecaribbean]

::adds to applause for IWearPurple and WhatWouldGenghisDo

[MyVisionsComeFromSoup]

also, there are different "levels" of suicide attempt - there's the ones who do actually want to do it, there's the ones who are very vocal but take three paracetamol, there's the ones who are already self harming with blades and don't really mean it/do really mean it. There's also the "don't care what happens to me" risky behaviour which could be classified as an attempt depending on your viewpoint.

Was there an actual definition of what a suicide attempt was, or was that also self defined? IME of teenagers, their views and definitions can and do change daily, and if you add in mental health issues etc, I'm convinced you could get a totally different result on a different week.

However, that's still a horrendous level of very unhappy young people .

[FizzyWaterAndElderflower]

48% had tried suicide, 82% reported ever having suicidal thoughts, and 91% had wanted to self harm. These results are not surprising given their negative life experiences. Suicide attempts were particularly associated with issues with accommodation (such as homelessness), experiencing school, university, or TAFE issues (not specified), experiencing bullying, experiencing neglect or been verbally or emotionally abused by a family member, physical abuse by a family member, physical abuse by someone outside of the family, sexual abuse by someone outside of the family.

If they matched non-trans people according to this history, I wonder if results would be significantly different. I also wonder that the correlation between trauma and trans - particularly when it comes to TIFs, and it's certainly not discounted by this survey.

I also note that in the parents portion, only 23% of parents reported a suicide attempt.

[cromeyellow0]

As WhatWouldGenghisDo points out, the survey is useless because there's no sample of any defined population.

It's much inferior to the Minnesota survey which allows systematic comparison between trans and others:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28736148

Of course it still can't identify causation.

The very broad definition of trans reflects the bewildering proliferation of gender identities in recent years. Ideally one would ask girls whether they bind and boys whether they tuck--that would sort our the sheep (those contemplating transition) from the goats (transtrenders).

[MrGHardy]

Causality. Why does no one understand what that means. Even people who use the word often don't.