Transgender kids who transform their appearance to match their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth may not necessarily experience mental health problems more often than other children, a small U.S. study suggests.
The findings were detailed in the journal Pediatrics, published on Thursday, February 25. They were based on a study led by Kristina Olson, director of the TransYouth Project and of the Social Cognitive Development Lab at the University of Washington.
Olson and her colleagues aimed to investigate the effects that social transition has on the mental well-being of transgender kids. Social transition occurs when transgender persons becomes more in tune with their gender identity, which differs from their natal sex, and are able to express that in the presence of others.
Compared with their gender-conforming peers, these transgender children were no more likely to have depression and only slightly more prone to anxiety symptoms.
“This finding is quite surprising given that, to date, nearly all studies of young gender diverse kids show that they have much higher rates of depression and anxiety than other children,” said Olson..
“In contrast, these children are looking remarkably typical,” Olson added by email.
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The study results are significant because a growing number of parents are letting transgender children make what’s known as a social transition, allowing them to change things like their clothes and hair to match their gender identity, researchers note in the journal Pediatrics.
To explore the connection between social transitioning and mental health, Olson and colleagues studied 73 transgender children ages 3 to 12, plus 49 of their siblings and a control group of 73 non-transgender kids who were similar in age and gender identity. On average, the transgender kids in the study were about 8 years old.
On a scale of 0 to 100, with a score of 50 representing the national average, the transgender kids in the study had average depression scores of about 50, compared with 48 for the control group and 49 for their siblings—differences that weren’t statistically meaningful.
For anxiety symptoms, the transgender kids had average scores of about 54, compared with 51 for the control group and 52 for their siblings. This difference was statistically meaningful, but the scores were still below the range in which doctors typically diagnose anxiety or recommend treatment for the condition.
In addition, researchers found the scores for so-called internalizing symptoms like depression and anxiety for these transgender children were much lower than results from previous studies.
“I have been seeing more and more kids who are absolutely thriving and happy, especially as communities and families become more aware of the importance of accepting and supporting these kids as they are,” said Dr. Illana Sherer, author of an accompanying editorial and founding member of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
Overall, the findings are important because they show that transgender kids can benefit from solid emotional health, as long as their loved ones allow them and even encourage them to be true to their inward gender identity, instead of trying to resist it or ignore it.
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Since suicide rates are usually much more elevated among transgender adults, and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety are more prevalent, it now appears obvious that such upsetting trends linked to discrimination, self-loathing and lack of inclusion could be reversed, by fostering social transitioning from an early age.
It must be noted that this new research has certain limitations, such as the fact that the answers were provided by parents, who may have been subjective when evaluating their offspring’s emotional well-being. Therefore, further research should be conducted, in order to test the validity of these preliminary findings.
Support For Transgender Kids Is Critical To Mental Health is an article from: The Inquisitr News
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