Professor Michael Biggs' guest post on TransgenderTrend's website provides the analysis of the data and also comment on the way it has been used in Butterfly, by Mermaids charity and individual TRAs:
(extract)
‘I want a happy daughter, not a dead son’, proclaims Anna Friel in the new ITV drama Butterfly. This line required no creativity from the scriptwriter, as it is a constant refrain in interviews with parents. ‘I’d rather have a live daughter than a dead son.’ ‘We prefer to have a living son than a dead daughter’. ‘Our only choice was to have a dead son or a living daughter.’ ‘I’d rather have a living son than a dead daughter’. ‘Do you want a happy little girl or a dead little boy?’ ‘My wife and I decided that we would much rather have a happy, healthy daughter than a dead son.’
ITV’s drama was heavily influenced by Mermaids, the British organization invested in the transgendering of children. According to its chief executive, Susie Green:
‘I have my daughter, whole and alive, but if I had refused to listen then it’s very likely that I would have a dead son.’
Like other transgendering advocates, she never shies from raising the spectre of suicide" (continues)
concludes:
Although calculated from only four suicides, the suicide rate is much higher than for teenagers overall—in my rough (over)estimate, 13 times greater. This is a genuine cause for concern. By comparison, anorexia multiplies the risk of suicide by 18 or 31 times (depending on the method of estimation), while depression multiplies it by 20 (Smith, Zuromski, and Dodd 2018). One study finds that autism multiplies the risk of suicide by a factor of 8 (Hirvikoski et al. 2016). This latter figure is especially relevant, given the fact that 35% of children referred to GIDS recently have moderate to severe autism (Butler, De Graaf, Wren, and Carmichael 2018).
Whether the higher rate of suicide among trans-identified teens is due to gender dysphoria or to co-incident conditions such as autism deserves urgent research. At the same time, we must realize that suicides of trans-identified children are rare tragedies and not—as transgendering organizations like Mermaids imply—a common occurrence. Rational and compassionate policy-making cannot be driven by the threat of suicide."
www.transgendertrend.com/suicide-by-trans-identified-children-in-england-and-wales/