Drag Participation and Trans Women’s Mental Health.

Drag was founded by trans women of color in the 1960s NYC ballroom scene and provided an underground space for poor queer people of color to perform and utopianize their gender. Since then, drag participation has the potential to support gender affirmation, yet little is known about the mental health benefits that drag may have on its participants. Using data from the 2015 US Transgender Survey (<italic>N</italic> = 27,648), we investigate drag participation and gender (trans women, <italic>n</italic> = 8,392; trans men, <italic>n</italic> = 7,762; and non-binary people, <italic>n</italic> = 9,120) as they are related to a composite measure of mental health. First, we assess mental health scores among the entire sample. Then, we focus on drag participation and trans women’s mental health. Finally, we examine the interaction between drag participation and gender on the full sample. Findings indicate that drag participation is significantly related to positive mental health scores for trans women. Results provide support for drag participation as a beneficial resource for trans women’s mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]