Transgender Suicide Epidemic

Psychology (Humanities), 2009

The idea we can save gender-dysphoric people from killing themselves in record numbers by making up genders, pumping kids with hormones, dating them, funding surgeries, and letting them use a different toilet.

A classic error of correlation vs causation. The World Health Organisation provides data on suicide rates. The most popularized study of transgender suicide cites a figure of 41% for ideation or “attempts” claimed by the Williams Institute of UCLA against a national average of ~4%. The data was preceded by “Suicide risk among transgender individuals” (2009) in Psychology & Sexuality, “Mental Health Disorders, Psychological Distress, and Suicidality in a Diverse Sample of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youths” (2010), the “Transgender Mental Health Study 2012”, and it just keeps getting higher.

There is no suicide data for LGBT people because there is no data on LGBT people, to begin with. All of the studies are so flawed they are essentially useless — particularly because they ignore the co-morbidity of gender dysphoria with other serious mental illness (pointed out in 1997), which makes a causative diagnosis entirely impossible.