Report: 35% of Transgender High Schoolers Attempted Suicide in Past 12 Months
Roughly 35 percent of transgender high school students have attempted to kill themselves in the past 12 months, according to a Friday report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Individuals identifying as transgender in high school are far more likely than their cisgender peers to commit suicide, with 34.6 percent of transgender students attempting suicide, according to the report.
Transgender students were also more likely to use drugs and engage in risky sexual behavior than their cisgender peers, the report says.
Transgender high schoolers were more likely to have had sex before they reached 13 years old and to have had four or more sexual partners than their cisgender peers.
They were more likely to have had sex than their biologically female peers. Using drugs and alcohol before engaging in sexual activity were also activities transgender high schoolers engaged in more frequently than their peers.
Transgender high school students are less likely to use protection and more likely to have HIV than their cisgender peers, according to the report.
Survey responses from 131,901 students in 10 states and nine different large urban school districts were used to form the CDC’s report. Data was collected in 2017 and then assessed.
Across states and school districts, 1.8 percent of high school students identified as transgender.
“This study is the first time this question [suicide attempts] was asked,” Caitlin Clark, a research associate at GLSEN, told NBC News.
The group conducts original research on LGBTQ issues in K-12 education, according to its Twitter. “In order to make policy changes, we need to have hard numbers to point to,” Clark said.
Over 50 percent of adolescent females transitioning to the opposite gender reported attempting suicide, according to a September study published in Pediatrics journal.
Only 10 percent of their male adolescent peers transitioning to the female gender reported attempting suicide, according to the study.
Medical research shows that 80 to 95 percent of children outgrow gender dysphoria naturally and accept their biological sex if allowed to develop naturally.
A Swedish study says transgender individuals suffer suicide rates 19 times that of their peers, and top studies show no mental improvement after gender-reassignment surgery.
Being transgender was formerly considered a mental health disorder until June, when the World Health Organization took gender dysphoria off the list of disorders to be published in its upcoming report.
Twitter, in November, banned misgendering transgender persons.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump can temporarily enforce restrictions banning transgender persons from serving in the military.
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