People who have undergone cross-sex surgery exhibit a significantly higher suicide risk

Dhejne et al. (2011)¹ conducted the longest follow-up study to date on the outcomes of “sex reassignment surgery”, covering a period of 30 years (1973-2003) and involving 324 individuals in Sweden. The study compared these individuals to matched controls based on birth year and sex, revealing that those who had undergone surgery exhibited a significantly increased suicide risk, with rates nearly 19.1 times higher than their matched controls.

In the US, a 2024 study by Straub et al.² analyzed the psychiatric risks of those who’ve undergone “gender-affirmation surgery” using a large patient dataset. This study compared individuals who had undergone the surgery to two control groups: one consisting of adults who had emergency department visits without any surgery and another comprising individuals who underwent either a tubal ligation or vasectomy. The findings indicated that those who had “gender-affirmation surgery” faced a 12.12-fold increased risk of attempting suicide compared to the emergency visit control group, and a 4.71-fold higher risk compared to the tubal ligation/vasectomy control group.

1. Dhejne, C., Lichtenstein, P., Boman, M., Johansson, A. L., Långström, N., & Landén, M. (2011). Long-term follow-up of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery: cohort study in Sweden. PloS one, 6(2), e16885. [Link] ↩︎
2. Straub, J. J., Paul, K. K., Bothwell, L. G., Deshazo, S. J., Golovko, G., Miller, M. S., & Jehle, D. V. (2024). Risk of suicide and self-harm following gender-affirmation surgery. Cureus, 16(4). [Link] ↩︎