Search

Gender and sexually diverse adolescents have been reported to be at an elevated risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. For transgender adolescents, there has been variation in source of ascertainment and how suicidality was measured, including the time-frame (e.g., past 6 months, lifetime). In studies of clinic-referred samples of transgender adolescents, none utilized any type of comparison or control group. The present study examined suicidality in transgender adolescents (M age, 15.99 years) seen at specialty clinics in Toronto, Canada, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and London, UK (total N = 2771). Suicidality was measured using two items from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Youth Self-Report (YSR). The CBCL/YSR referred and non-referred standardization samples from both the U.S. and the Netherlands were used for comparative purposes. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that there was significant between-clinic variation in suicidality on both the CBCL and the YSR; in addition, suicidality was consistently higher among birth-assigned females and strongly associated with degree of general behavioral and emotional problems. Compared to the U.S. and Dutch CBCL/YSR standardization samples, the relative risk of suicidality was somewhat higher than referred adolescents but substantially higher than non-referred adolescents. The results were discussed in relation to both gender identity specific and more general risk factors for suicidality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their Translations article in the January issue of the Journal, Turban and van Schalkwyk provide a critical evaluation of the recently published literature on co-occurring gender dysphoria (GD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).1 In addition, they refer to this flux in interest as part of a larger increase in publications on transgender people, which are mostly reviews and do not contain new data. Given the low-grade evidence in this field for most clinical recommendations,2 good-quality research is of great relevance. We support the debate on the GD-ASD literature and acknowledge that translations of the findings to the lay press such as "Do transgender children just have autism?" are not helpful. Also, we agree with many of the limitations brought forward by the authors and acknowledge that, at present, sound underlying evidence for a GD-ASD link is lacking. However, we believe that some nuance in argumentation could help forward the debate of this clinically important topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]