Contextualizing the well-being of transgender youth in Spain: indicators of lifestyles, developmental contexts, victimization at school, and mental health

In recent years, the need to consider the gender identity in the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the research, as well as in the intervention, has been manifested. As an evidence of this growing interest in learning about the reality of transgender people, it is observed an exponential increase in publications of scientific research in the last 15 years. Undeniably, transgender people face severe victimization and discrimination episodes in a cis-hetero-patriarchal social system that affects their health and well-being, explained in depth from Ian Meyer's minority stress model and its subsequent updates. This has led research to focus on transgender health from a pathological perspective, in which topics such as risk behaviors or serious mental health problems stand out. Studying this area of health is undeniably crucial, but at the same time there is a lack of research on elements that build resilience or at least offer a more normalizing, positive, and complete view of transgender health. Regarding other methodological limitations, samples used in transgender studies are usually obtained with non-probabilistic sampling (such as snowball sampling or chain sampling). At the same time, few large-scale studies include questions in order to know the gender identity of the participants. It may happen that large studies manage to collect information on transgender people, but within the LGBT community, which allows us to have data, but not in a distinguished and clear way. Moreover, in the case of studies conducted with random and large samples, they come from Western and English-speaking countries, thus there is a tendency to generalize the results of people living in these contexts to countries whose legislation or sensitivity to gender diversity may be different. The purpose of this doctoral dissertation has been to bring to light an overview of the health and well-being of transgender adolescents in Spain. First, the utility of the two-step approach as a