Citation

Newcomb ME, Hill R, Buehler K, Ryan DT, Whitton SW, Mustanski B. Arch. Sex. Behav. 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Medical Social Sciences, Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, Northwestern University, 625 N. Michigan Ave., 14-059, Chicago, IL, 60611, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10508-019-01533-9

PMID

31485801

Abstract

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people are disproportionately impacted by various health issues and associated risk factors, but little is known about differences in these outcomes between gender identities within the TGD population. This study characterized the health of a diverse sample of TGD youth and young adults. Data were taken from the baseline visit of two longitudinal studies in the Chicago area, RADAR (N = 1079, M age = 20.8 years) and FAB 400 (N = 488, M age = 19.57 years), which are cohorts of young sexual and gender minorities assigned male at birth (AMAB) and assigned female at birth (AFAB), respectively. There was a combined sample of 214 TGD (128 AFAB, 86 AMAB) individuals across cohorts. We examined differences between gender identities in self-reported health and related psychosocial variables, and compared TGD youth and their cisgender sexual minority peers from their cohort of origin on all variables. Among TGD youth, we found high rates of depression and suicidality (ideation, plan, attempt), violence (trauma, victimization, childhood sexual abuse), and substance use (cigarette, alcohol, illicit drug use). With the exception of depression, transgender women and non-binary AMAB youth reported worse health outcomes than transgender men and non-binary AFAB youth. Non-binary AMAB youth reported the highest rates of certain outcomes, including traumatic experiences and suicidal ideation. TGD youth generally reported worse outcomes than cisgender sexual minority youth; these differences were less pronounced among AFAB youth.

FINDINGS point to the diversity of experiences within the TGD population and critical needs for intervention approaches to mitigate health disparities.

Language: en

Keywords

Gender identity; Mental health; Non-binary; Substance use; Transgender; Violence