Countering trans suicide figures

[Walkingtheplank]

DD asked I'd we could talk about trans issues/female rights yesterday. All very calm but ultimately we disagree on key points.

She raised the point that trans teens are more like to (try to) commit suicide.

Can anyone add a link here to a article explaining why this is not true so that I can share it with her?

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

This isn’t difficult stuff.

@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.

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'.

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/

@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?

nepeta Yoday 18:50
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

31 Jan, Leo Sapir start of Twitter report:
Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, Finland's leading expert on pediatric gender medicine and chief psychiatrist at its largest gender clinic (Tampere University), just gave an interview to the country's leading newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat

Excerpt:
Dr Kaltiala said:

"Mentally healthy young people who experience their sex in a way that is different from their biological bodies are not automatically suicidal."
https://twitter.com/LeorSapir/status/1620448081039994881

Perhaps someone would be able to find Dr Kaltiala’s evidence.

The point being that if teens are suicidal, they are not mentally healthy. If they are not mentally healthy there will be all sorts of reasons for this. It cannot be assumed that the feeling of wanting to become transgender is the overiding factor.

I’m not writing off anything.

I am saying - entirely factually - that the Swedish study does not aim to evaluate the effectiveness of transition in reducing suicide.

Anyone claiming that it shows that transition worsens suicide rates, or even that transition is not effective at reducing suicide rates, is simply objectively wrong. That is not what the study shows.

@TeaKlaxon as I am understanding what's been posted so far it is untrue to say that trans kids are more at risk of suicide than non-trans kids.

"Trans people still exist in a deeply transphobic society"

There is a limit to what you can do with "transition", and you can't really change biological sex.

Now while some people's responses to trans people may be genuinely transphobic, a lot of the responses that cause a problem for the trans person may simply be because they are correctly recognised for their biological sex and treated accordingly. That's not "transphobic", or not without begging the question.

It's far from clear that you can blame "transphobic society" here, rather than just, some trans people may come to be disillusioned because of the limitations of transition, or there are other factors in play.

I think this is correct. It wasn't designed for that purpose.

But then we don't have any controlled, randomised studies that show transitioning children is a good idea either, as far as I know.

Well that's a day that I won't get back.

I have followed every link and reference in this thread. I have followed all of them up with any online references that were available.

The evidence is that there is no evidence either way. There is no rigorous identification of groups; there is no attempt to filter for comorbidities; time frames are post-applied or ignored and, this is the zinger for me, there is no adjustment for children who are 'trans' but haven't revealed themselves.

A lot more work needs to be done before anybody can talk about 'trans suicides '

Just to be clear, I am neither denying or promoting this.

So @TeaKlaxon seems to be insistent on this thread in saying that because the Swedish study does not compare adult pre and post transition suicide rates it should not be used to indicate that suicide rates are improved by transitioning. TeaKlaxon insists that suicide rates remain high because of how awful society is to Swedish adult trans people. The recorded outcome of improvement in the Swedish study is improvement in gender dysphoria from transitioning.

But TeaKlaxon has failed to explain why then, if there isn’t a study that shows the rate of suicide in adults isn’t improved by medically transitioning, why are we told it’s imperative to allow people to medically transition or they’ll Jill themselves?

And why has TeaKlaxon ignored the paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry that purported to show that mental health and suicide rates improved after surgery but the authors and the journal had to issue a retraction because the actual data showed no such thing?

And why has TeaKlaxon failed to produce any data that shows the rate of suicide in children is improved by medical transition, which was the question in the OP?

The answers are simple. TeaKlaxon knows no such data exists. Children’s mental health and suicide rates are not improved by medical transition. TeaKlaxon also can’t produce any data on adults because also doesn’t exist. So TeaKlaxon, remarkably, has spent the thread arguing without irony, that the data posted by others is too weak to draw any conclusions about!

Somehow this doesn’t apply to the weakness of the entire “better a live daughter than a dead son” narrative that has dominated the discourse over the last 10 years, does it now?

Bottom line: the “children will kill themselves if they don’t get puberty blockers/wrong sex hormones” line is a lie. A bald-faced lie.

Gender clinics medically transition children for the simple reasons that they believe a child’s identity should be physically given to them and they want to achieve the best cosmetic appearance they can for them. They use the suicide lie for one simple reason; they know that if they tell everyone it’s about aesthetics only, then they’ll lose the support of everyone, like your DD OP. They need the emotional manipulation to allow their cosmetic work to go unchallenged.

And they will eventually get found out. People are waking up to the reality.

I'm not sure I would agree with this summary.

I'm with you on comorbidities I think although I've read studies that themselves critique the level of comorbidities and call for further research..

Have you see the what is a woman documentary? It covers how the accadenic field is captured. People risk their careers if they try to research this. There is no funding for it (and therefore studies that do proceed will be limited as they don't have the resources to go big and long term).

Even so I would argue the studies I've read that show no change in suicidality or a reduction generally have larger sample sizes and look longer term.

The ones showing a reduction in suicidalitiy are much shorter term only a year or two and the sample sizes as small with MASSIVE numbers if participant lost to follow up so the results can't be accurate.

I absolutely agree with you more research is needed. But the evidence is that research is actively being blocked.

Also there is a documented feeling of euphoria that people feel after transitioning. This would account for why initially there is a reduction in suicidality. There is also a lot of medical care and being looked after following such operations. I've seen it proposed (but not researched) that this being treated as a patient and cared for feels good and when it's no longer needed to such great extent and when the initial response (online) to a person transitioning drops off and the attention wanes that's when reality sets in.

I think in that Matt Walsh film the transman trying to speak up in order to protect others, especially chikdren, mentioned a mental crash that comes about eight years later.

Do you remember their name PurpleBugz? They may have a website linking this information.

@ScrollingLeaves it was Scott Newgent.

And why has TeaKlaxon failed to produce any data that shows the rate of suicide in children is improved by medical transition, which was the question in the OP?

Presumably because that was not the question in the OP. The question in the OP was quite simply are transpeople more likely to attempt suicide than non transpeople:
“She raised the point that trans teens are more like to (try to) commit suicide.
Can anyone add a link here to an article explaining why this is not true so that I can share it with her?”

The data shows this is actually true. Transpeople at all ages are significantly more likely to think of suicide, attempt suicide and complete suicide than nontranspeople.

Im not surprised teaklaxon hasn’t joined the derailment of “it’s a lie that transition reduces suicide rates” or “transition increases suicides” assertions because there is no data for this and their posts have reiterated that fact several times to include pointing out grossly misleading posts purporting to show data that does.

The data shows this is actually true. Transpeople at all ages are significantly more likely to think of suicide, attempt suicide and complete suicide than nontranspeople.

No, this isn't a true statement either. Where is the data that "trans" children are more likely to complete suicide? As an example, women are more likely to think/attempt suicide, with men significantly more likely to complete it. The two groups often do not align. With completed suicide, there is a material fact, someone died by their own hand. With ideation, we are into the realms of convenience samples for self reported surveys and invested people "remembering" feelings and self harm sometimes decades later.

https://media.samaritans.org/documents/ResearchBriefingGenderSuicide20211_v7.pdf

Welcome to the thread. The data was posted, linked and quoted several times and is from both meta-analysis and smaller studies.

@ChopperC110P

That's not what the evidence says though.

Have you read all the evidence here in Transgender Trend's page on suicide:

www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/

It is what the evidence says. Your link is addressing a completely different question.

@ChopperC110P

Welcome to the thread. The data was posted, linked and quoted several times and is from both meta-analysis and smaller studies.

I can't find what you're claiming. Please could you quote it again. I will hold. I'd like the evidence that children identifying as transgender are more likely to kill themselves than other children. Thanks. Or I'll conclude that you don't actually have it, because I can see @Britinme asked the same question twice and hasn't received an answer from either you or TeaKlaxon.

I'd also like you to acknowledge the methodology issues with self reported studies for making such a sweeping claim.

Sorry, meant to quote you.