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?

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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'

[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.

[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.

[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.