Citation

Klemmer CL. JAMA Netw. Open 2019; 2(9): e1911068.

Affiliation

USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Medical Association)

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.11068

PMID

31490533

Abstract

Transgender and gender-diverse individuals are those whose gender identity (ie, the deep-seated internal sense of gender as a man, woman, or otherwise) differs from that which is socially expected of them given the sex assigned to them at birth. To my knowledge, the scant research literature in the behavioral health sciences on transgender and gender-diverse communities is almost exclusively on populations in the United States and Europe, with a few studies coming from other countries that also have large populations of people with European ancestry (eg, New Zealand). I commend Peng et al1 for conducting their ground-breaking research in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China). They found that nearly all of the respondents (92.8%) reported at least 1 type of family-based harassment (eg, verbal and physical abuse, economic control), and more than three-quarters (76.5%) reported at least 1 experience of school-based harassment (eg, verbal or cyber bullying, social isolation). Almost half of the study participants (43.8%) were at risk for major depressive disorder, and more than one-third (37.4%) were at risk for an anxiety disorder. Nearly half of the study participants (47.8%) reported experiencing suicidal ideation in their lifetime.1 Transgender and gender-diverse adolescents in the sample reporting abuse, bullying, or neglect had increased odds of suicidal ideation in their lifetime. These data are concerning, although they are not surprising...

Language: en