By the time transgender children turn 9 to 10, they already show increased susceptibility to mental health problems compared with their cisgender peers.
This is according to a study – “Prevalence of Mental Health Problems in Transgender Children Aged 9 to 10 Years in the US, 2018” by Douglas H. Russell, Monsurul Hoq, David Coghill, et al – that appeared in JAMA Network Open.
As it is, “research into the mental health of transgender and gender diverse young people points to concerning levels of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues,” the researchers noted.
So for this study, they compared mental health outcomes between transgender and cisgender children aged 9 to 10 years who completed baseline assessment in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, which recruited more than 11,000 children across the US using multistage probability sampling with the aim of obtaining a representative sample of the US population. The analysis included 7,169 children and compared transgender (58 participants) and cisgender (7,111 participants) children who understood and answered the question “Are you transgender?” The 4,692 participants who reported not understanding this question were excluded along with 17 who did not record a response.
Previous research using clinical samples of transgender children aged 5 to 11 years reported lower rates of depression and anxiety than was observed in this cohort study. Apart from methodological differences in assessing mental health, a possible reason for this disparity is that transgender children attending specialist gender clinics are likely to have support from their families (a key protective factor for the mental health of transgender young people); in comparison, many transgender children in the general population lack parental support for their gender.
Previous studies using clinical and convenience samples of transgender adolescents also had higher rates of depression and anxiety compared with this study’s sample. This is consistent with earlier clinic-based observations that transgender children have lower rates of anxiety and depression compared with transgender adolescents,4 which may be explained by observations from the general population that depression and anxiety more frequently develop during adolescence.
Still, “findings suggest that by 9 to 10 years of age transgender children already show increased susceptibility to mental health problems compared with their cisgender peers, which has important public health implications. Whether this is due to stigma, minority stress, discrimination, or gender dysphoria is unclear, but providing appropriate mental health supports to this vulnerable group is paramount.”
