Transgender-identified youth are prone to elevated rates of depression and/or anxiety

Comorbidity   Mental health  

A study1 which compared the medical records of 1333 trans-identified children and adolescents between the ages of 3 and 17 years old with a similar cohort of non-trans-identified children and adolescents showed that 49% of males and 62% of females had depressive disorders.

An Australian study2, with a smaller sample of gender dysphoric children and adolescents, found depression and anxiety rates of 62.0% and 63.3% respectively.

The majority of parent respondents in Littman’s 2018 study3 – 69.4% – answered that their child had social anxiety during adolescence; 44.3% said that their child had difficulty interacting with their peers, and 43.1% that their child had a history of being isolated (not associating with their peers outside of school activities).

Similar conclusions have been found4 for adults with gender dysphoria, who suffer from elevated rates of mood disorders (48.9% among natal males, 36.1% among natal females) and anxiety (38.8% among natal males, 33.3% among natal females). A further paper5 found somewhat lower figures, giving a prevalence of 42.1% for mood disorders and 26.8% for anxiety disorders.

  1. Becerra-Culqui, T.A. Liu, Y., Nash, R., Cromwell, L., Flanders, W.D., Getahun, D. Giammattei, S.V., Hunkeler, E.M., Lash, T.L., Millman, A., Quinn, V.P., Robinson, B., Roblin, D., Sandberg, D.E., Silverberg, M.J., Tangpricha, V. & Goodman, M. (2018). ‘Mental health of transgender and gender nonconforming youth compared with their peers. Pediatrics 141(5). [Link] ↩︎
  2. Kozlowska, K., McClure, G., Chudleigh, C., Maguire, A.M., Gessler, D., Scher, S. & Ambler, G.R. (2021). ‘Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service’. Human Systems, 1(1), 70–95. [Link] ↩︎
  3. Littman, L. (2018). Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports. PLOS ONE, 13 (8). [Link] ↩︎
  4. Mazaheri Meybodi, A., Hajebi, A., & Ghanbari Jolfaei, A. (2014). Psychiatric Axis I: Comorbidities among Patients with Gender Dysphoria. Psychiatry journal 2014. [Link] ↩︎
  5. de Freitas, L. D., Léda-Rêgo, G., Bezerra-Filho, S., & Miranda-Scippa, Â. (2020). Psychiatric disorders in individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria: A systematic review. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 74 (2), 99–104. [Link] ↩︎
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