← Facts Matter
Facts Matter
Studies on Transgender Individuals Find Elevated Suicide Rate—Especially After Surgery
00:11:56
Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:00]
A
A new study out of Canada found that suicide rates among transgender individuals were significantly higher than the general population. Which of course by itself is not exactly news, but it does add to a growing body of research which shows that among other things, that people who actually go through with gender affirming surgeries have higher rates of suicide and poor mental health outcomes than those who don't. Let's go through this research together. And I will quickly mention as a caveat that today's episode has all the ingredients of getting suppressed by YouTube. We're talking about transgender individuals as well as suicide. Meaning if you could please smash those like and subscribe buttons as basically a counterbalance to the system so that this video can actually reach more people via the YouTube algorithm. Now, with that out of the way, the study that I referenced at the beginning came out of Canada and you can see it right there up on your screen. The scientists conducted this research by using data from Transpulse Canada, which was a 2019 survey of trans and non binary people in Canada ages 14 plus. And after parsing through the data, they found a significantly elevated risk factor for both suicidal ideation as well as attempt quote. Findings show that over the past year, 30.2% of participants reported suicidal ideation and 4.2% reported a suicide attempt. Six subgroups with varying levels of past year's suicidal ideation were identified with a higher prevalence of ideation among those with lower educational attainment, particularly youth aged 16 to 24 with 49.4% and among college educated participants who identified as disabled with 38.3%. In conclusion, past year suicidal ideation and attempts were high compared to general population estimates and were concentrated among those age 60, 16 to 19 and amongst those 20 plus with a history of sex work. Now again, this elevated level of suicidal ideation is not exactly news. Sadly, this group as a whole has been known to have elevated levels of both ideation as well as attempts. In fact, to that end, there was another study that was published just a few months ago out of Denmark. And Denmark is an interesting case because they actually collect a lot more granular health data compared to the US so they can later go back and parse it out and get a much higher resolution image of what's actually happening on the ground. And here's what they found. A study in denmark that spanned 40 years and included 6.6 million people found that those who identified as transgender have significantly higher rates of suicide and attempted suicide than others in the population. The Danish study included 3,759 people who identified as transgender. Among them, there were 92 suicide attempts and and 12 suicides between 1980 and 2021. While these numbers seem small, they suggest that the rate of suicide attempts among those who identify as trans is 7.7 times higher than the rate of suicide attempts in the broader Danish population, and the rate of suicide deaths is 3.5 times higher. The researchers behind the study, they also made mention that the numbers might actually be undercounted, since the records don't always make note of a person's gender identity. And and to that end, the authors of the study, they noted the following quote. The authors note that they only had data on gender identity for those who saw gender affirming care at a hospital or applied for a legal change of gender. Such data suggests that 0.6% of Denmark's population identifies as transgender, but researchers believe the true number is much higher, which would mean the suicide rate would also be much higher. And although again, the US does not have as clear data on this topic as Denmark does, the data that we do have actually shows similar findings. For instance, according to The Trevor Project's 2023 U.S. national Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People, it found that half of transgender and non binary young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and nearly one in five transgender and non binary young people attempted suicide in the past year. So that is very high. This data set was looking at people aged 13 to 24, which in the US, depending on which study you're looking at, makes transgender young people suicide a temp rate anywhere from double to quadruple the general population. Now, this fact ties into what many parents across the country have actually experienced firsthand, which is that one of the ways that modern psychiatrists are trained to force parents to accept their kids being trans is by basically presenting them a binary choice, and goes something like this. Would you rather have a living daughter or a dead son? Would you rather have a dead daughter.
- [04:35]
B
Or a living son? That question is asked over and over again, and therapists are trained to say.
- [04:41]
A
That the implication there is that you either accept your kid's gender transition or they will likely kill themselves. It's sort of like a hostage situation that many parents find themselves in being told that if they don't accept their children's new gender identity, it. It's tantamount to actually killing them. However, more evidence is coming to light that this might not actually be the case and that actually the opposite is true. For instance, up on your screen is a study that was Published in the pages of the Journal of Urology, it's titled Rate of Psychiatric Emergencies before and After Gender Affirming Surgery. With gender affirming surgery being an umbrella term for one of either two procedures. There's phalloplasty, where they cut some skin off your arm, roll it up, and attach it to your groin to make basically a man made penis. And then there's the opposite vaginoplasty, which is a more brutal surgery where a doctor removes the penis and the testicles and leaves basically a man made hole in its place. And what these researchers were looking at was the suicide rate of the men and women before and after getting one of these surgeries. Essentially, the researchers were trying to figure out whether it was true that people who identify themselves mentally as the other gender are more likely to try and kill themselves and if they don't actually get access to gender affirming surgery. And what they did was to analyze the records of patients over in California that they were actually able to acquire from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. And they were specifically looking at the data in the six year period between 2012 and 2018. And in total, they had the records of 1,226 patients, 869 who received vaginoplasty and 357 who received vaginal phalloplasty. And what these researchers discovered was that the rate of attempted suicide skyrockets after surgery, at least among men. Quote. The suicide rate from men identifying as transgender women in California doubled. Among those who received vaginoplasty. More than twice as many men who identify as transgender women had attempted suicide after receiving the surgery when compared to those who had not undergone the procedure. Meaning they found that in California, men who cut off their penises were twice as likely to try and take their own lives after the fact compared to before. Specifically, according to this research, the suicide rate in this group before surgery was 1.5%, but after surgery, it jumped to 3.3%, which is more than double. It's also worth mentioning that, at least according to this study, the suicide rate among women who got phalloplasty surgery did not skyrocket. However, though that's only talking specifically about suicide. When the researchers looked more broadly at psychiatric encounters before and after surgery, they found an increase in both men and women. If there was a psych encounter Prior to surgery, 34% of the vaginoplasty group and 27% of the phalloplasty group had a psych encounter after surgery, at least one ER or inpatient psych encounter was reported in 22.2% of the vaginoplasty patients before the surgery. After the procedure, 33.9% of vaginoplasty patients who had a reported psych encounter beforehand experienced another. For phalloplasty patients, it was 20.7% before the surgery and 26.5% afterwards. Okay, so that was maybe too many numbers. But just to break it down visually, 22% of transgender men had psychiatric episodes before surgery and 33% afterwards, while 20% of women had psychiatric episodes before surgery and 26% afterwards. Meaning that at least according to this research, getting a gender affirming surgery actually wound up increasing a person's chance of having a psychiatric encounter. The study's authors they concluded their paper by writing the following quote Rates of psychiatric emergencies are high both before and after surgery. Although both the phalloplasty and vaginoplasty patients have similar overall rates of psychiatric encounters, suicide attempts are more common in the latter. In fact, our observed rate of suicide attempts in the phalloplasty group and is actually similar to the general population, while the vaginoplasty group's rate is more than double that of the general population. Patients undergoing vaginoplasty with a history of prior psychiatric emergencies or feminizing transition are at a higher risk and should be counseled appropriately. Furthermore, the conclusions of this California study are actually affirmed by another study that was published over in Finland. Quote A major new study out of Finland found that providing cross sex hormones and and gender transition surgeries to adolescents and young adults did not appear to have any significant effect on suicide deaths. The researchers examined records on all 2083 people who had their first visit to either of the nation's two gender clinics at age 22 or younger, at 18 on average and as young as 8 from 1996 to 2019. These researchers put together a comparison group of nearly 17,000 Finns. This included eight people for each gender distressed person that matched to their age and birthplace, and what they found was that among this group there were 55 deaths, including 20 by suicide. Of the 55 deaths in the study population, 20 or 36% were suicides. In bivariate analysis, all cause mortality did not statistically significantly differ between gender referred adolescents and controls 0.5% versus 0.3%. However, the proportion of suicides was higher in the gender referred group, going from 0.3% versus 0.1%, meaning that all cause mortality did not really differ between the people who were referred to the gender clinics or not. But the proportion of people who die by suicide increased by roughly three times. And so that's all to say that if you ever hear a trained psychiatrist or a school counselor give you this binary choice that you have to either accept your kid as being trans or else they will kill themselves. Would you rather have a living daughter or a dead son? Well, you should know that the data suggests otherwise, that actually allowing your kid to go down this road might actually increase the risk of suicide, at least according to that study. If you'd like to go deeper into anything that we discussed in today's episode, I will throw all my research notes. You'll be able to find them down in the description box below this video. And lastly, I'll quickly mention that there are many topics like this that don't get a fair shake by the legacy news outlets. They basically choose a narrative that they wish to push. They basically choose an outcome. And then if a study kind of falls outside of that purview, they don't talk about it, right? Or they kind of have a quote, unquote expert come on and spin the conclusions of the study to fit the narrative that they're trying to push. You know it, I don't even need to spell it out. The Epoch Times, however, is different. We report the facts and, like you, make up your own mind. And so if you're looking for an honest source of news, if you're kind of tired of the options that are presented to you, it's. If you're looking for a source of news that actually respects your intelligence as a human being, click on that button below this video and try the Epoch Times. We're running a phenomenal trial offer right now. It costs barely anything to try a subscription, and you can even cancel anytime. So there's no risk. But you will get so much in exchange. You'll get all the articles, the analysis pieces, the videos, the documentaries, the infographics, everything that we publish going back 25 years. You'll get access to all of it. And so again, if you're looking for an honest source of news that actually respects your intelligence as a human being, click on that button below this video. Try the Epoch Times. I'm sure you will love it. And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed. Most importantly, stay free.